http://patdollard.com/2013/07/zimmerman-prosecution-whistleblower-fired/Corrupt Zimmerman Prosecutor Angela Corey Fires Case Whistleblower
State Attorney Angela Corey fired her office’s information technology director Friday after he testified last month about being concerned prosecutors did not turn over information to George Zimmerman’s defense team in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
On the same day attorneys finished their closing arguments in that nationally watched trial, a state attorney investigator went to Ben Kruidbos’ home about 7:30 a.m. to hand-deliver a letter stating Kruidbos “can never again be trusted to step foot in this office.”
The letter contended Kruibos did a poor job overseeing the information technology department, violated public records law for retaining documents, and noted he was questioned in March when the office was trying to determine who had leaked personnel information obtained through a computer breach.
In an interview Friday, Kruidbos denied the allegations in the letter, which was written by Cheryl Peek, the managing director of the State Attorney’s Office.
He said he had acted in good faith about “genuine concerns.” He said he had been proud to work at the State Attorney’s Office and feared the letter would cripple his chances at finding another job to support his family, including a 4-month-old son.
“I don’t have any regrets,” he said, “but I am terrified about the future and what that will end up being.”
His attorney Wesley White — who resigned from the State Attorney’s Office in December and is a critic of Corey — said the firing was aimed at sending a message to office employees “that if they feel like there is wrongdoing,” they should not disclose it or seek legal guidance from a private attorney.
“If they do speak to an attorney, then they are dead,” he said. “The State Attorney’s Office will do whatever is necessary to not only terminate them, but destroy their reputations in the process.”
Jackelyn Barnard, spokeswoman for Corey and the State Attorney’s Office, did not return phone calls or emails for comment.
Kruidbos, 42, had been on paid administrative leave since May 28 from his $80,892 job.
In January, he used computer software technology to extract photographs and text messages from the source file in Martin’s cellphone. Kruidbos was able to recover more information than the Florida Department of Law Enforcement obtained previously.
GETTING LEGAL ADVICE
Kruidbos said he became concerned that lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda might not have turned over Kruidbos’ report to defense attorneys. Kruidbos asked White in April for legal advice and described some contents of his report such as a photo of an African-American hand holding a gun, a photo of a plant resembling marijuana and a text message referring to a gun transaction.
White then contacted one of Zimmerman’s attorneys and learned the defense had not received the report generated by Kruidbos. The defense did receive the source file from the cellphone and used its own experts to extract data.
Last month, Zimmerman’s attorneys subpoenaed both White and Kruidbos during a pretrial hearing on their motion seeking sanctions against prosecutors. Circuit Judge Debra Nelson deferred a ruling until after the trial.
Before Kruidbos’ name surfaced in the Martin trial proceedings, he received a pay raise for “meritorious performance,” according to a document dated May 16 in his personnel file.
But the dismissal letter written by Peek contends he did his job poorly as information technology director and said he should have asked someone in the office about his concerns regarding the Martin case.
“Your egregious lack of regard for the sensitive nature of the information handled by this office is completely abhorrent,” Peek wrote. “You have proven to be completely untrustworthy. Because of your deliberate, wilful and unscrupulous actions, you can never again be trusted to step foot in this office.”
The letter said Kruidbos “apparently questioned the ethics” of de la Rionda, who has been an assistant state attorney since 1983. “His record as an honorable and respected attorney is unblemished and beyond reproach,” Peek wrote.
Kruidbos said the question of de la Rionda’s ethics “is not really my place to decide.”
He said he asked White for legal advice because he was concerned he could face “legal exposure” if the cellphone report wasn’t turned over to the defense before the trial started.
He said he did not feel comfortable posing that question to anyone within the office because the State Attorney’s Office had just conducted an in-house probe of whether someone was leaking personnel information.
OFFICE ‘PARANOIA’
“It felt like everyone was on heightened sensitivity,” Kruidbos said. “It felt like the paranoia in the office had gotten worse.”
In March, the office investigated a security breach involving someone hacking computers to obtain disciplinary matters and personal health information about employees, according to Peek’s letter. That investigation followed news reports in February that Corey approved using about $342,000 in taxpayer dollars to upgrade pensions for herself and de la Rionda. Kruidbos said the investigation might have stemmed from the stories about the pensions.
Kruidbos said office administrators told him that he and Richard Komando, who was executive director of the office, were suspected of improperly obtaining the information. Komando resigned April 4. Kruidbos said he does not believe Komando was involved because “it makes no sense. He worked very hard to get to where he was. He had nothing to gain from that.” Keep reading
Sanford, Florida (CNN) — An employee of the Florida State Attorney’s Office who testified that prosecutors withheld evidence from George Zimmerman’s defense team has been fired.
Ben Kruidbos had been on paid administrative leave since May 28 from his job as director of information technology for the State Attorney’s Office.
A spokeswoman for Fourth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Angela Corey said Kruidbos was no longer an employee of the office.
Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, is on trial in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year.
Kruidbos testified before Zimmerman’s trial began that Martin’s cell phone contained images of Martin blowing smoke, images of marijuana and deleted text messages regarding a transaction for a firearm and that those images had not been given to Zimmerman’s defense team.
He received the termination letter, dated July 11, on Friday, the same day jurors began deliberating Zimmerman’s case. The letter states: “It has come to our attention that you violated numerous State Attorney’s Office (SAO) policies and procedures and have engaged in deliberate misconduct that is especially egregious in light of your position.”
Read the termination letter
Kruidbos said that, when he printed a 900-page Florida Department of Law Enforcement report from Martin’s cell phone in late 2012 or early 2013, he noticed information was missing.
Concerned that attorneys did not have all the information they needed to prepare the case, he said, he reported his concerns to a State Attorney’s Office investigator and later to prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda.
Kruidbos said he generated a report that was more than three times the size of the one that had been handed over.
For example, Kruidbos said that 2,958 photos were in the report given to the defense but that his report contained 4,275 photos.
Kruidbos also said that he has been told to not put specific case-identifying information into internal e-mails.
Through his attorney, Wesley White, Kruidbos informed Zimmerman’s defense team that the information existed.
In court, Kruidbos testified that he was concerned that he could be held liable if all information wasn’t shared. “All the information is important in the process to ensure it’s a fair trial,” he said.
In a six-page dismissal letter, the State Attorney’s Office, Fourth Judicial Circuit, blasted Kruidbos’ assertions and motivations. Managing Director Cheryl R. Peek accused Kruidbos of having erased data from a laptop in violation of the Public Records Law and derided his concern about being held liable as “feigned and spurious” and “nothing more than shameful manipulation in a shallow, but obvious, attempt to cloak yourself in the protection of the whistleblower law.”
She concluded, “Because of your deliberate, willful and unscrupulous actions, you can never again be trusted to step foot in this office. Your have left us with no choice but to terminate your employment.”
But the defense said Kruidbos’ testimony supports its claim that the state violated the rules of discovery.
“When it takes me six months to get a color picture of my client, when the first one I get is a black and white, when I look at it and go, ‘This is off a cell phone; cell phones don’t take black-and-white pictures,’ and I ask for a color copy, that takes two months,” defense lawyer Mark O’Mara said Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Martin Savidge.
“And then I get a pastel-colored color copy of it, and it takes me to file a motion and have a hearing set before I get the actual .jpeg, no, that’s frustrating. That should not happen. I’ve done this too long to make believe in my own mind that that’s happenstance.”
O’Mara said he learned about the missing information months after he was to have received it. “The only way that we really found out about it … and the only way that we really found out about the intensity of the failure to give us information was when a person from their own office, a whistle-blower, came forward and said, ‘I gave them that information in the middle to end of January’ and we didn’t get it until June 4th.”
He said he was “beyond” shocked. “It could have derailed the trial,” he said.
The defense said it did not get the complete report until a few days before the trial. O’Mara and co-counsel Don West argued that they needed more time to go through the information found on Martin’s phone and asked for a delay, which was denied.
Judge Debra Nelson said before the trial that the possibility of sanctions — requested by the defense — would be addressed after the verdict.
The defense team declined to comment Saturday.
