
DELAWARE’S OFFICE OF DISCIPLINARY COUNSEL
IS A JOKE
As Durham, NC district attorney Michael Nifong fights for his
professional life, Delaware lawyers who run afoul of the law can rest assured that this State’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel will do
everything within its power to thwart any effort to lodge charges against them.
To make matters worse, the ever vigilant watchdogs at the State
Bar Association return complaint letters to the senders unopened.
In 1995 I filed a complaint of professional misconduct against
Attorney General M. Jane Brady for lying at my pardon board hearing and for launching a bogus “investigation” to smear me before the Board.
Soon afterwards I was shipped off to Arizona where I stayed for nine years.
While in Arizona I discovered that the man who prosecuted me and
put me on death row in 1976, Peter Bosch, wasn’t a real lawyer. He’d never passed the bar exam and was illegally posing as a deputy attorney
general.
I researched the law and saw that Rule 5.5 of the Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits “a lawyer who is not admitted to practice
law in this jurisdiction.” Not only that, an admitted lawyer may not “assist another [non-lawyer] in doing so.”
That meant that not only had Peter Bosch flouted the law, but so
had then Attorney General Richard Weir, Chief Deputy Attorney General Charles Brandt and Superior Court Judge Bernard Bailick.
I then researched Delaware statutes and found out that Supreme
Court Bar rule 51 absolutely prohibits non-lawyers from any type of practice in Superior Court or on felony cases.
So what was pretend-lawyer Peter Bosch doing prosecuting a capital murder case? How could prominent attorneys like Weir and Brandt
aid and abet an act so egregious it could cost them their careers?
I learned that the Attorney General’s Office under Weir had
carried on like a bad soap opera. Scandals and swaps were common place and the swingers out-swung Austin Powers.
Charles Brandt wooed and won his boss’ wife and the former Mrs.
Weir became Mrs. Brandt.
In such a Peyton Place environment Peter Bosch was able to do
pretty much whatever he wanted.
I filed a complaint with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. My
complaint was ignored. I then wrote a detailed letter. Still no response. I then filed another set of complaints. I finally got a
response of sorts – after a year of complaining.
Disciplinary Counsel Patricia Bartley Schwartz refused to take
any action, closed the case, and castigated me for even complaining.
“This office is neither a trial court nor a court of appeals,”
Ms. Schwartz pronounced. “If the court believes that the record in a matter of a lawyer’s conduct before the court raises issues of ethical
misconduct that should be investigated by this Office, the court can
refer those issues to this Office.”
In other words, “Boy, stay in your place.”
Investigating allegations of Rule and Statute violations is Mrs.
Schwartz’s job. If she won’t do her job, what is the State of Delaware paying her for? To coddle, comfort and protect rogue lawyers?
I’ve now taken this shocking violation of the law to the Delaware Supreme Court.
Peter Bosch threatened and tampered with witnesses. He falsely
claimed to be “an officer of the court” while lying to the court.
For 30 years I’ve proclaimed my innocence of murder and endured
the indignity of being called a “convicted murderer” in the press. But should people put faith in a conviction that could only be obtained by
illegal means?
Peter Bosch became a use car salesman in Texas. Somehow that
seems appropriate.
Amir Fatir #137010
W – I – 15
Delaware Correctional Center
1181 Paddock Road
Smyrna, DE 19977
Amir Fatir designed several rehabilitation programs for prisoners and
recently wrote “The Egyptian Tree of Life.”