https://www.nj.com/news/2024/08/the-case-was-quickly-tossed-now-lawyers-for-nj-rabbi-want-probe-into-why-it-was-started.htmlThe case against N.J. rabbi was tossed. Now his lawyers want probe into why it was started.
By Ted Sherman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The trial was thrown out before it ended.
“The evidence presented in the state’s case,” said Superior Court Judge Joseph Paone in New Brunswick, “is insufficient to warrant a conviction.”
And with that, he entered a judgment of acquittal in the corruption trial of Lakewood Rabbi Osher Eisemann, who was charged with pocketing funds from his private school for children with developmental disabilities.
As a prosecutor stammered seeking a stay, the judge interrupted him. “Did you ever hear of the Sixth Amendment?” he asked, referring to the rights of the accused. “This case is over.”
Days after the case was dismissed, lawyers for Eisemann are now calling for the New Jersey Attorney General’s office to investigate the decisions its prosecutors made in a years-long pursuit of the rabbi.
Former federal prosecutor Lee Vartan, who represents Eisemann, accused the state’s Office of Professional Integrity and Accountability, or OPIA, of “a shocking disregard for both the facts of the case and the law.”
In a letter Friday to Acting Attorney General Lyndsay Ruotolo, he called for an immediate investigation who authorized the prosecution to continue and why OPIA did not follow the state’s own guidelines regarding evidentiary rules and mandatory disclosure obligations to the defense.
“OPIA has a history of slipshod and failed investigations and unethical prosecutors who courts have found violated defendants’ rights,” Vartan said.
Eisemann, 67, the founder and director of the School for Children with Hidden Intelligence in Lakewood, was charged in 2017 of using a private foundation to launder thousands in public tuition funds.
Convicted two years later, he was granted a new trial after questions were raised over the failure to turn over key evidence to the defense that might have exonerated him. According to court filings, the defense had not seen exhibits showing that a bookkeeper had been responsible for a $200,000 accounting software entry error that formed the basis for the allegations against the rabbi.
In his retrial, which began July 9, new cracks in the case appeared.
Vartan noted that an outside accountant for the rabbi’s foundation who was brought in to testify as a state witness said the books and records the state relied upon were “garbage.” Another former accountant, also a state witness, called the state’s entire theory of prosecution “wrong.” And Thomas Page, the lead case detective, testified that there was no crime and he did not know why the trial was proceeding.
Shortly after Page testified, the judge added his own concerns about the matter, agreeing that the ledger entries that appeared to write down a loan obligation were nothing more than a bookkeeping error.
“The easiest course of action for me today would be to just let this case go to the jury,” said Paone. “But I have a professional and ethical obligation to rule when called upon.”
Vartan said not only did the case detective testify that there was no crime, but that because prosecutors knew the bookkeeper who made the mistake agreed, they deliberately refused to call her as a witness to keep her testimony from the jury.
“OPIA sought to convict Osher Eisemann by perpetrating a fraud on the court and jury,” he said. “That requires immediate investigation.”
A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office complained that Vartan’s letter “cherry picks from numerous motions and transcripts and does not reflect the overall litigation of a case that spanned multiple administrations and was tried twice.”
She defended the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, noting that it handles “important, complicated, and sensitive cases” through the work of attorneys and investigators who “perform this work knowing that they may be criticized by powerful and influential people.”
Eisemann’s attorneys had every incentive to raise concerns with the court, which it did at every turn, she added, without the court expressing concerns about the prosecutors or the Attorney General’s office.
“We recognize that no prosecutor or agent is infallible, and when legitimate concerns are identified, we review them and if necessary, address them,” she said.