Nathan Wade And The Incompetence Problem

I certainly agree with the consensus expressed by Alan Dershowitz and others over Judge McAfee's ruling in the Fulton County RICO case, that in an effort to be even-handed, he split the baby, but the baby died. But most observers miss the bigger point, which I began to discuss a month ago in another post about incompetence as it relates to Nathan Wade and the eventual progress of the Fulton County case. Jordan Sekulow looks at the edges of the same problem below at 2:57:

Sekulow: . . . here's the queation, Andy: If Nathan Wade is removed, the work that he generated, the work product that he generated during this period of time, would be, under the Wong Sun case [371 U.S. 471 (1963)], normally deemed fruit of the poisonous tree.

Andy: That's right.

Sekulow: There's nothing in the order about that at all.

Andy: No, he doesn't think it out, the judge doesn't think it out.

Sekulow: What happens, then, to all the -- he was the lead prosecutor. What happens to all the witness interviews and evidence they gathered -- ?

Andy: I tell you wnat I would do if I were the defense attorney, it's called a motion to suppress. I would say that everything that was gained by this person who was improperly in the case should be suppressed, and everything that comes from that fruit of the poisonous tree should also be suppressed, and all the evidence that was accumulated by the acts, uh, and practices of Nathan Wade should be suppressed and not be permitted to be used as evidence in the case.

It looks like this will be yet one more defect in the whole case, which is generally acknowledged to have become a tainted mess. I'm sure the defense will pursue it, if only to delay the trial past the election, although this will mean more uncertainty and expense for all the defendants -- rather than facilitating the path of justice, it seems as if Judge McAfee has, with whatever good intentions, simply piled new complications on top of each other when the best course would have been to dismiss the case entirely.

But I see another problem that may cancel out the fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree issue: just what did Nathan Wade do over the time he was lead prosecutor? His main accomplishment seems to have been to take DA Willis on six vacations in a five-month period. The exchange above refers to his "work product", but in another case, a 2020 investigation of Cobb County jail deaths, Wade actually generated no work product at all:

Asked about his findings for a local TV news investigation, Wade conceded that he created no “documents, communications, or records memorializing, reflecting evidence, or relating to the work,” according to the news station, 11Alive.

“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it. That’s what I have,” Wade told a lawyer for 11Alive who was trying to obtain Sheriff’s Department internal records about the probe through public records act requests.

On Wednesday, two days before he released his findings in the Willis-Wade matter, Judge McAfee dismissed six charges from the RICO indictment for being too vague. The consensus among observers was that this was a reflection of Wade's inexperience in such cases, which goes back to the question of whether he ever accomplished much as lead prosecutor -- we know now that he wasn't hired for his legal expertise in any case. His work history in the Cobb County investigation is that he simply doesn't do much other than bill the client.

I'm not a lawyer and have no experience working in a DA's office. On the other hand, I do have lots of experience working in organizations where incompetence is a problem. When incompetents are at the top, it's pervasive throughout. Competent people who can make higher-ups look bad are weeded out; others are shunted into irrelevance. I suspect it's been in the nature of things that the Fulton County RICO case was never going to come to trial, but now the problem will be whether a new lead prosecutor can make anything of the work product that's ostensibly been generated by that office since 2021 under Wade's leadership.

And this leaves aside the problem of whether Willis, given what we know of her character, can hire a lead prosecutor capable enough and strong enough to bring the case to trial under the current highly adverse conditions. I expect the farce to continue.