False Swearing Case Of Schiavo Agent Next Week
Posted on Wednesday, 11 of November , 2009 at 8:32 pm
By June Maxam
TALLAHASSEE, FLA—Will the attorney for the former political consultant and registered agent for TerriPAC, the defunct political action committee of Michael Schiavo, show up next week for the monthly meeting of the Florida Election Commission?
The false swearing case of Derek Newton involving election fraud is supposed to be on the Nov. 17 and 18 agenda of the FEC at the Senate Office Building in Tallahassee according to a detective in the Public Corruption Unit of the Miami-Dade Police Department but the case isn’t listed on the agency’s public agenda. http://www.fec.state.fl.us/calendar/November2009.pdf
Newton received a three month reprieve in the case in August when the matter was supposed to be heard but one of Newton’s attorneys failed to show at the session, claiming that he had “other matters” and could not attend, Miami-Dade Det. Joseph Curl said.
The election fraud investigation involving Newton who teamed up with Michael Schiavo, one of America’s most infamous wife killers, is on hold and the investigation remains open.
There’s also still the issue of Newton allegedly impersonating a law enforcement officer.
So far, Newton has avoided criminal charges in the matter although under Florida Statutes, Section 104.011 of the Election Code, false swearing is punishable as a third degree felony.
Newton, originally from Seminole, Fla., in Pinellas County, was formerly based in Miami and has now relocated back to Pinellas County, according to Curl.
Following a three year investigation into alleged election fraud by Newton, it was determined that Newton allegedly created a fictitious candidate in filings made with the Miami-Dade Elections Department and the elections division of the Florida Department of State during the 2006 campaign for State Representative District 108. Authorities say he tried to sabotage a candidate running against his client.
Newton, now 36, was acting as a political consultant for Peter Walsh, a Miami attorney and former assistant state attorney for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office who was seeking the office of State Representative for District 108 as a Democrat in addition to Kathy Emery and other candidates.
Kathy Emery, a three-term member of the Biscayne Shores Community Council. Emery had resigned her elected seat on the council in order to run for the open seat in District 108. The Sept. 5, 2006 district primary was her first time running for office in a partisan election.
Newton allegedly created a fictitious person named “Kathy Avery”, filing candidate’s statements and other documents in the name of “Kathy Avery” during June and July 2006 in connection with the District 108 campaign.
Although the “announced candidate’s statement” filed June 28, 2006, with the state claimed that “Katherine Avery” was a native of Miami, a U.S. Army veteran and an active law enforcement officer, no such person exists and more importantly, no such law enforcement officer exists.
Det. Curl told The North Country Gazette that Newton and his attorneys, Ben Kuehne of Miami and Bruce Young of Tampa, signed a plea agreement earlier this year in which Newton admitted his involvement in the creation of the fictitious candidate.
In a deal in which no criminal charges will be lodged, Curl said Newton admitted to a single count of false swearing. If the deal is accepted by the Florida Elections Commission, Newton must pay $1,000 to the Florida Elections Commission, $5,000 to the Public Corruption Unit for the cost of the investigation and $1,000 to the State Attorney’s Office, Curl said.
Joseph Centorino, the head of the public corruption unit for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, said that technically his office will not close the Newton/Walsh election fraud case until the agreement is formally accepted by the FEC.
Centorino confirmed that the state would not be lodging criminal charges against Newton who he termed a “dirty trickster”.
Neither Centorino or Curl will release a copy of the case file or the admission signed by Newton until the case is officially closed.
A search warrant had been executed by the Miami-Dade County Public Corruption Unit in January, 2008 at Newton’s property in Coral Gables, Curl said. He said that four laptops were seized along with about 200 discs. However, he said that they were not able to seize Newton’s main computer as it had “disappeared”.
The detective said that they were able to confirm that emails relating to the fictitious candidate “Kathy Avery” had originated from Newton’s home computer but that they were unsuccessful in matching the exact date of the Avery filings to the computers that they seized. He said they were hampered in their investigation due to the fact that Comcast, Newton’s internet service provider dumps their records every three months.
“We were able to show it was his computer involved but we couldn’t match the exact date”, Curl said, a fact which hampered a criminal prosecution. Curl said despite the use of handwriting analysis they were also unable to conclusively determine who had signed the name “Kathy Avery” to the documents filed under penalty of perjury. However, in the administrative agreement signed by Newton, Curl said that Newton admitted his involvement.
Kuehne, one of Newton’s attorneys, had been under federal indictment for allegedly approving a tainted $5.3 million legal payment by an accused Columbia drug kingpin to high profile defense attorney Roy Black. The indictment alleged that Kuehne, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election debacle, broke the law in 2002-03 when he vouched for millions paid by one-time Medillin drug lord Fabio Ochoa Vasquez to Black.
On Oct. 26, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Florida trial court’s dismissal of certain money-laundering charges against Kuehne, ruling that criminal defense attorneys can’t be charged with taking illicit proceeds from defendants as legal fees.
Young, Newton’s other attorney, a former assistant state attorney for the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Pinellas/Pasco Counties and former officer with the St. Petersburg Police Department, was cleared of allegations that he coerced women clients to pay their fees with sexual favors but was found guilty in April, 2006, of conduct that was “prejudicial to the administration of justice” for having a “sexual retainer contract”.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/040606SexRetainer.html
Schiavo is the individual who fought his in-laws for nearly 10 years in the Florida court system, vying for a court order to remove his brain injured wife’s feeding tube in order to achieve her death. Twice it was removed and then ordered reinserted but on March 18, 2005, Schiavo and Pinellas County judge George Greer were successful in having the tube removed for the last time with Greer even ordering, contrary to Florida law, that she could not receive food and hydration naturally.
Terri Schindler Schiavo died on March 31, 2005, of marked dehydration, 13 days after the feeding tube was removed as the whole world watched in a horrific invasion of her privacy and her family’s privacy engineered by Michael Schiavo, euthanasia attorney George Felos and Greer.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/06/24/political_shenanigans/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/09/03/schiavo_swearing/ 11-11-09
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This article may not be reprinted or republished in its entirety without the express written permission of The North Country Gazette.
Category: Courts, Crime, Disabled, Drugs, Florida, Government, Police, Politics, Schiavo
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Comment by Claire
Made Thursday, 12 of November , 2009 at 10:33 am
At the risk of sounding churlish…….
What other attorneys are representing his many chins? And have they also been indicted?
