{"id":9988,"date":"2008-09-21T19:34:35","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T00:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/?p=9988"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:53:20","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:53:20","slug":"lawyers-eliminating-witnesses-oh-cisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2008\/09\/21\/lawyers-eliminating-witnesses-oh-cisco\/","title":{"rendered":"lawyers eliminating witnesses: oh, Cisco!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> . . . . . . Robert Simels & A. W. Parker<\/strong> . . . . . \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

T<\/strong><\/em>he New York Times<\/em> recently noted that “The federal complaint against Robert Simels, a well-known New York criminal defense lawyer, reads like a script from an HBO crime drama.”\u00a0 “Defense Lawyer Charged With Witness Tampering<\/a>” (Sept. 11, 2008).\u00a0 That’s because<\/p>\n

“Mr. Simels, who has represented some of New York\u2019s most notorious gangsters and rappers and an assortment of athletes and celebrities, was arrested on Wednesday and charged in what officials said was a plot to \u201cneutralize\u201d witnesses who were willing to testify against one of his clients [Shaheed Khan, an accused drug kingpin with reputed ties to the Guyanese government].”<\/p>\n

— Read more about the indictment of Bob Simels at the WSJ Law Blog<\/em><\/a>, and Simple Justice<\/em><\/a>, which links to this affidavit in support of the arrest warrant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> It may seem like an HBO crime episode, but while I was watching my favorite $5 dvd<\/a> this afternoon, I discovered that the Simels tale also “reads like a script” from the classic 1950’s network tv western The Cisco Kid<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Trying to avoid any serious punditry today, I put a disc from “The Best of the Cisco Kid<\/a><\/em>” in my dvd player.\u00a0 The first episode I played, out of the 35 on the 3-disc set, was “Confession for Money<\/a>,” from the show’s first season.\u00a0 Unless I was in Mama G’s lap, at 13 months old, when she watched its original broadcast on January 2, 1951, it was my first time seeing “Confession for Money.”<\/p>\n

The story opens with the fictional lawyer A. W. Parker (played by I. [Isaac, “Ike”] Stanford Jolley<\/a>) visiting his jailed client Tom Tracey.\u00a0 We quickly learn that the Cisco Kid and his sidekick Pancho Gonzales were witnesses to Tracey killing a popular banker and were due in town that morning to identify Tracy for the Sheriff.<\/p>\n

Here’s an outline of the Cisco Kid<\/em>‘s lawyer-gone-bad tale:<\/p>\n