In The News

In a fascinating critical analysis of the Shujun Wang trial and the media coverage of it, the storied liberal newsweekly The Nation took on 60 Minutes, the FBI, and the federal prosecutors who pursued ZMO client Shujun Wang for the better part of a decade.

“Prosecutors likened Wang’s work to that of a John LeCarré or Graham Greene novel, comparisons that beggared belief if you had the real facts. In reality, authorities spent the better part of a decade chasing a big score only to be forced to settle for a consolation prize whom they now needed to make appear far more important than he actually was.”

Any ruling that blocks the release of the defense motions would “impose a prior restraint on Mr. Pugh and this office’s right to free speech and free expression,” defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma wrote in a letter to the judge. Margulis-Ohnuma also said he saw no basis for keeping sealed the people’s request to block the release of documents.

Photo by David Guerrero: https://www.pexels.com/photo/newspaper-vending-machines-14560041/

China’s spies are everywhere, according to a the season finale of 60 Minutes that aired last Friday. But ZMO Law PLLC client Shujun Wang, a 74-year-old Chinese-born American historian based in Queens, was not sent to prison even after he was convicted of violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma explained the weaknesses in the government’s case against Prof. Wang to CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell as part of this fascinating look at Chinese overseas represssion.

According to Reuters, Diddy’s lawyers face an uphill battle to undermine his accusers. But the case charges both sex trafficking and racketeering–known as RICO.

“The fact that he had a fight with his girlfriend seems like a thin reed to charge RICO,” Margulis-Ohnuma said, referring to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, a New York-based defense lawyer, said Combs’s panel would likely consist ultimately of people without firm convictions about issues of consent and sexual abuse. “One side or the other will figure out a way to get rid of the ones who do have strong opinions,” Margulis-Ohnuma said.

A Chinese American scholar, Shujun Wang, was convicted of spying on Chinese dissidents but was spared prison time by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, instead receiving time served and supervised release. The prosecution portrayed Wang’s pro-democracy activism as a facade allowing him to gather information and relay it to China’s intelligence agency. Wang’s attorney, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, described the judge’s decision as “wise” and argued that Wang’s actions were not financially motivated and caused minimal harm.

A Manhattan jury convicted Christopher Reese, who is not a lawyer, of fraud and unauthorized law practice for posing as a paralegal to inmates’ families. Prosecutors said Reese collected hundreds of thousands of dollars by promising impossible outcomes, such as prison release. The defense attorneys at ZMO Law PLLC argued he was a highly effective “jailhouse lawyer” who helped free several inmates, but the jury still found him guilty on four of five charges. Reese faces up to 20 years in prison and plans to appeal.

Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, a defense lawyer in New York who has handled international drug trafficking cases, argues that any violation by Mexican authorities of the defendants’ right to contest their expulsion would not interfere with their prosecution in the U.S.

“Once Mexico delivers them here, there’s absolutely no issue for the U.S. prosecutors – unfair as that might seem,” he said.

Meanwhile, the politically charged criminal case against another senior Mexican drug lord, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, has been proceeding in New York also.

The designation enables prosecutors to charge someone caught moving a cartel’s drugs with narcoterrorism, a crime carrying a 20-year mandatory prison sentence, said New York defense lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma.

That is double the 10-year mandatory minimum for possession with intent to distribute, a common charge in run-of-the-mill drug cases.

In his closing argument at the trial, Wang’s attorney, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, described Wang’s diaries and emails as the “self-important musings” of a “lonely old guy” who was willing to talk to anyone who would listen to him. “These are not covert actions of a spy,” Margulis-Ohnuma said. Wang’s use of his personal email address for communicating with his Chinese contacts amounted to “ridiculous spycraft” that an actual spy would never have used, he told the jury.

Federal prosecutors would need the approval of the U.S. attorney general to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, who now faces federal charges in connection with the midtown Manhattan murder of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson. A potential trial would proceed in two phases: one to determine Mangione’s guilt, and, if he is found guilty, a separate trial for a jury to decide whether to sentence him to death.

Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, a New York defense lawyer, said prosecutors more frequently seek the death penalty for crimes with multiple victims or when law enforcement officers are killed.

Several lawyers who are appointed to indigent federal defendants through the CJA Panel have told the Daily News that many of their checks had also gone missing or been stolen in recent years.

Still, one CJA panel lawyer, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, bristled at the idea that his fellow defense attorneys would press for prison time.

“I’m a little disappointed in my brethren,” he said. “I happen to think that prison doesn’t fix almost anything … There has to be better societal fixes than the prison system.”

The Appellate Division, Fourth Department, last month affirmed State Supreme Court Justice Paul Wojtaszek’s August 2023 decision to vacate the convictions of Brian Scott Lorenz and James Pugh. A jury convicted Lorenz and Pugh in 1994 of murdering Deborah Meindl, 33, in her home on Franklin Street in the City of Tonawanda in February 1993. The District Attorney’s Office plans to submit an application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals. In court, prosecutors said they are “definitely retrying” the case. Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma responded that they are either “bluffing or seriously misguided.” 

James Pugh, Mr. Lorenz’s co-defendant, was released on parole in 2019. But the trial judge and an appellate judge in Rochester refused to intervene to release Mr. Lorenz pending another possible trial. In late June, his lawyers asked the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, to intervene. A spokesman said the court would “decide the motion at a future session.”

Ilann Maazel, one of Mr. Lorenz’s lawyers, called his client’s continued imprisonment a “Kafkaesque nightmare” that is “intolerable, unconstitutional and wrong.” 

During trial, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma portrayed Mr. Wang as a gregarious academic with nothing to hide.

“In general, fair to say he was very open and talkative with you, right?” the defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being affiliated with the Chinese security ministry. “He was,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym.

Wang and his defense did not deny that he communicated with the Chinese agents, but said his communication was largely benign, and did not contain sensitive information. “I think we showed pretty effectively at the trial that what he was doing … did no harm to the United States or to anyone here, said Wang’s attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma. “I stand by what he said, that he’s pro-democracy and against the Chinese government,” he said.

Outside the courthouse, principal attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said that he respected the verdict but did not believe Mr. Wang acted will ill intent. “He certainly didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He spent his life fighting the communist regime and, you know, life is complicated.”

“He’s devoted his life to promoting a free democratic china through peaceful means,” he said in his opening statement to the jury, “It was for democracy – it was not as an agent of the Chinese government.”

Attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma explains that the government continues to stall on discovery disclosure.