Daily Archives: May 20, 2009
Attorney Paul Bergrin charged with Conspiracy to Commit Murder and Racketeering
Wow, what else can you say about Paul Bergrin. After dodging a huge bullet by avoiding prison on prostitution charges, he is now facing life in prison for a variety of charges that make him look like a mob boss. Simply put, the Government alleges that he ordered witnesses to be killed and helped his clients carry out illegal activities.
Bergrin was indicted and charged with racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, murder of a federal witness, and conspiracy to murder a federal witness and a witnesses in a state case, as well as Travel Act violations and conspiracy to commit Travel Act violations. He is looking at life in prison on some counts and a long enough sentence to be a life sentence for him at his age.
Also charged with Paul Bergrin are Thomas Moran of Paramus who is an attorney with an office in Bergrin’s law offices, Vicente Esteves who is an alleged drug dealer, Yolanda Jauregui, a/k/a Yolanda Bracero of the same Nutley same address as Bergrin, and Sundiata Koontz of West Orange.
The Government alleges that is has informants in addition to recorded conversations that capture Bergrin discussing murders and drug trafficking. In addition, there are hints that Bergrin may have been involved in other murders as other cases that he has been involved in had witnesses that turned up dead. Needless to say, it looks pretty bad for Mr. Bergrin.
He was arrested and held without bail. The Government wants to try to keep him held without bail as they allege that he has significant contacts in other countries, including the Dominican Republic, Japan and Costa Rica. In addition they allege that they have received information that he has five false passports.
Story is here.
Robert Higbee trial on May 19th
The same witness was on the stand all day and didn’t even finish. TruTv stated that the most damaging testimony against Higbee was the fact that Higbee should not have went through the stop sign. As a 7 yeard old may say, Duh! The issue here is that Higbee didn’t see the sign, not that he saw it and said, screw it, I’m going for it. Thus, I don’t see how that testimony amounted to anything.
On the other hand, it seemed like Higbee’s attorney, William Subin, scored a lot of points on cross. He did a great job in focusing on the fact that there were any number of reasons for “someone” to not see the stop sign. The testimony got rather complex at times and I am simplifying this. Now if the Prosecutor is smart, he spends most of his re-direct tearing down this testimony by getting him to say that while “someone” could be distracted by this, that or the other thing, he cannot testify that Higbee was in fact distracted by anything. However, Mr. Subin already took care of some of this by getting the witness to indicate that he didn’t even investigate Higbee’s perception, distractions, etc.
The bottom line is, this cross was the most important so far for the defense.
Tonacchio Law LC 