Judge says U.S. government violated federal defender’s rights with false crime claim

In a blistering order, a federal judge criticized an ICE agent, the Justice Department and the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office for inadvertently circulating a false accusation against a federal defender, then stopping short of correcting it. The disputed accusation came from a memo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer Michael O’Neal, who falsely accused federal defender Matthew Deates of helping an immigrant evade arrest last spring, by escorting him to the light rail after a court hearing. In reality, Deates was taking his client to the train station when a judge placed the immigrant on pretrial release and granted his return to California. The agent’s claim was discovered when the memo was included in a batch of evidence sent to a group of lawyers representing 15 Minnesotans accused of conspiring to impede and injure federal officers. Deates, who is not connected to the conspiracy case, and his lawyer denied the false accusation, saying it exposed Deates to public suspicion of a crime. They demanded that the U.S. Attorney’s Office retract the statement and say it was inaccurate. Federal prosecutors instead asked the lawyers who received the memo to return the note and said it did not reflect the office’s position but stopped short of calling the assertion false. Advertisement In his order, Magistrate Judge David Schultz called the ICE agent’s claim about Deates “reckless and false,” and said the Justice Department violated Deates’ rights by spreading the falsehood and leaving him without a way to clear his name. Schultz gave the U.S. Attorney’s Office one week to tell everyone who got the false memo in writing that it was sent in error, with his order attached. In a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Deates’ attorney, Chris Madel, praised the order. “He could not be more clear: Matt Deates did nothing wrong,” Madel said. “It’s long past time for ICE and DOJ to do something to rectify the wrong they have perpetrated on a highly respected lawyer. An apology would be a nice start.”