Here are excerpts from the Sacramento Bee's take on the mortgage fraud acquittal before Judge Burrell on Thursday:
Two defendants in a mortgage fraud trial in Sacramento federal court had a rare experience Thursday. They were acquitted.
Statistically, it was a notable event.
The jury’s verdict flies in the face of a 93 percent conviction rate in federal criminal cases nationwide.
In the Sacramento-based Eastern District of California, the 2014 conviction rate was 92.7 percent. Of that, 97.8 percent were defendants pleading guilty and 2.2 percent were defendants found guilty at trial. There were 902 defendants convicted; 882 pleaded guilty, 20 were found guilty at trial and six were acquitted.
It is also the first acquittal before U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. in his 23 years on the federal bench.
At the conclusion of a trial that was in session 11 days beginning March 3, the jury found Deborah Loudermilk and Buena Marshall not guilty on all six mail fraud counts they were charged with in the mortgage fraud case.
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Marshall, 69, of Sacramento, was represented by seasoned criminal defense lawyer Mark Reichel.
Reichel said the government’s biggest mistake was using as witnesses four co-defendants of his client who had pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the prosecution in return for leniency in sentencing.
He said jurors told him after they were discharged that they resented the fact the case was built around four witnesses who were testifying for reduced prison sentences.
“The jurors felt there should have been some substantial evidence presented other than the testimony of those four,” Reichel said. “And,” he said, “the cross-examination really destroyed their credibility and made them out to be untruthful.
“In the information they supplied to prosecutors in connection with their plea agreements, in the government’s opening statement at trial, and during direct examination of these four, my client was said to have recruited them and explained how the scheme would work,” Reichel said. “On cross-examination, all four of them acknowledged that was not true.”
Loudermilk, 57, of Suisun City, was represented by James Reilly, a criminal defense lawyer from San Rafael with almost 40 years of legal experience. He agreed with Reichel’s assessment of the four defendants turned government witnesses.