On the street outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, Scott Leemon might not draw much notice. He is slight, with a standard-issue 30-something goatee.
But on the sixth floor of the courthouse yesterday, Mr. Leemon, a defense lawyer who has plied the edges of some big cases, was just about all anybody could talk about.
Defense lawyers in one of the biggest Mafia cases going, the prosecution of Joseph C. Massino, who is accused of being the boss of the Bonanno crime family, said Mr. Leemon had been an "unwitting dupe" in a scurrilous plot by prosecutors to infiltrate the defense's legal team. Until recently, Mr. Leemon was a member of that team.
"We're talking about government corruption," said Mr. Massino's chief defense lawyer, David Breitbart. The prosecutors' legal arguments amounted to saying that the claim was ridiculous.
Adding intrigue (and considerable confusion), the defense lawyers also disclosed that it was the very same Mr. Leemon the prosecutors referred to when they made their own murky allegations six weeks ago against an unnamed defense lawyer in the Massino case.
The prosecutors said then that one of the lawyers on Mr. Massino's team carried messages to associates for Mr. Massino, who is in jail, so that Mr. Massino could continue to run the crime family while he awaits trial on racketeering charges next month.
Details here from The New York Times via LexisONE.com.