By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net
In oral arguments today before the state Disciplinary Board, Amelia C. Kittredge urged a panel of judges to "simply apply some common sense" and finally reign in former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, whom she accurately pegged as an "overzealous prosecutor."
Kittredge, a lawyer for the state's Office of Disciplinary Counsel, has been stalking the ethically-challenged Fina for a couple of years now. She told the Disciplinary Board that Fina broke "the most revered" and "sacred" legal privilege of them all, the attorney-client privilege, and for that he deserves to be publicly censured.
Fina does have a proven track record of leaking grand jury secrets, trampling on constitutional rights of the accused, and blowing off legal ethics, but for years his brazen conduct been protected in the courts by what some would describe as the old-boys network. But Kittredge pummeled away at Fina today, saying the Disciplinary Board cannot allow Fina to basically use a loophole to "obliterate" a longstanding rule of professional conduct that's the only defense against an overzealous prosecutor like Fina who seeks to subvert the most basic protection afforded by the criminal justice system, by turning a defendant's own lawyer into a witness against him.
