Voiding of guilty verdict latest twist in federal conspiracy case.

Byline: Kris Olson

A woman convicted of conspiring with three co-workers to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud has been granted a new trial due to a Confrontation Clause violation, just the latest twist in a case with an unusual procedural history.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled that the trial of Donna M. Ackerly had been impermissibly tainted when a federal prosecutor questioned a witness about the guilty plea of an alleged co-conspirator whom the government did not plan to call to testify.

Ackerly, Charles Garske and Richard Gottcent were account executives in the Institutional Services Group at Georgeson, a proxy solicitation firm, while Michael Sedlak worked as a researcher at ISG and reported directly to Gottcent.

Ackerly and her colleagues have been accused of engaging in a scheme to suborn the "honest services" of Brian Zentmyer, a mid-level employee of the proxy voting advisory firm Institutional Shareholders Services.

Together, the Georgeson employees allegedly induced Zentmyer to disclose confidential information, including the tallies of proxy votes cast by ISS' institutional shareholder clients, in exchange for bribes of tickets to sporting events and concerts totaling about $14,000 over five years.

Ackerly, Garske, Gottcent and Sedlak were initially tried together, despite Ackerly's two unsuccessful attempts to sever her trial from that of her three co-defendants.

After being interrupted by snow emergencies four times, that joint trial finally seemed to be drawing to a close on March 16, 2018. But that day, one of the jurors learned that his wife had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and was released from his service.

The parties were asked if they consented to having a jury of 11 decide the case. The government initially said it was but then clarified that its position was contingent upon all four of the defendants also consenting.

Ackerly alone resisted, in what the government suggested was a ploy to revisit the severance issue.

But Ackerly's attorney, Michael Kendall of White & Case in Boston, warned that the government would "create a double jeopardy problem that would prevent the retrial of the other three defendants" if it refused to proceed with the 11-juror trial with the three willing defendants. That proved prescient.

With matters at loggerheads, Stearns reluctantly declared a mistrial.

Gottcent, Garske and Sedlak then moved to dismiss their indictments under the Double Jeopardy Clause. On...