Ex-Commissioner Kerik Is Jailed as Judge Assails Pretrial Conduct
By RUSS BUETTNER and STACEY STOWE
Bernard B. Kerik, the city’s former police commissioner, was sent to jail Tuesday by a federal judge who said Mr. Kerik had leaked sealed information from his future criminal trial as part of an attempt to generate public sympathy.
Judge Stephen C. Robinson of Federal District Court in White Plains revoked Mr. Kerik’s $500,000 bail and delivered a withering criticism of Mr. Kerik from the bench, describing him as a “toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance.”
“And I fear that combination leads him to believe his ends justify his means,” Judge Robinson said. “He sees the court’s rulings as an inconvenience, something to be ignored, and an obstacle to be circumvented.”
Mr. Kerik, 54, who was once President Bush’s top choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security, faces three criminal trials in federal court. Jury selection in the first trial — in which he faces corruption, conspiracy and tax fraud charges — is to begin on Monday.
Judge Robinson said Mr. Kerik had violated the terms of his bail in providing the sealed information to a New Jersey lawyer who has helped raise money for Mr. Kerik’s defense but is not formally part of the defense team.
The lawyer, Anthony K. Modafferi III, e-mailed the material to The Washington Times in an effort to generate coverage that would disparage prosecutors, Judge Robinson said. The judge did not reveal the nature of the information, which remains under seal, but said the newspaper did not publish any of it.
Mr. Kerik’s lawyers asked the judge to let their client remain free for 48 hours while they prepared an appeal, but Judge Robinson rejected the request.
At the end of the four-hour hearing, Mr. Kerik, who ran the city’s jail system before becoming police commissioner, methodically removed a tie and a gold medallion from his neck. He pulled a wallet and a few papers from his pocket, said goodbye to his lawyers and walked with federal marshals through a rear door of the crowded courtroom without glancing back.
Mr. Kerik’s lawyer, Barry H. Berke, said he planned to appeal the decision, but declined to comment further.
Interestingly, both the judge and the defendant worked under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Kerik was appointed commissioner of the Correction and Police Departments by Mr. Giuliani and later worked at Mr. Giuliani’s private consulting firm. In the 1980s, Judge Robinson served as a federal prosecutor under Mr. Giuliani, who was then the United States attorney in Manhattan.
Mr. Kerik’s lawyers have described Mr. Modafferi, who did not return calls, as someone who occasionally provides free legal advice to Mr. Kerik.
A blog item posted under Mr. Modafferi’s name this year criticized the news media and prosecutors for going after Mr. Kerik and giving a pass to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who admitted during his confirmation that he had failed to pay more than $34,000 in federal taxes over several years.
“Kerik was, and is, a scapegoat for the anger of those who couldn’t stand Giuliani and were fearful that he would be the Republican nominee for president,” the posting said.
Prosecutors have alleged that while Mr. Kerik was correction commissioner, a construction company paid for renovations at his home in the Bronx in the hope that he would help the company obtain a city license.
Mr. Kerik also faces federal charges that he failed to report more than $500,000 in income while he was in charge of the Correction and Police Departments, and that he provided false information while being considered for the nomination as secretary of homeland security.
Mr. Kerik has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in state court stemming from the apartment renovation.
The issue of leaked material in the first federal case had been brewing for some time.
Last year, prosecutors accused another lawyer, who was not formally involved in the Kerik case, of passing confidential information, which they said he had obtained from Mr. Kerik, to potential witnesses. At that time, Judge Robinson threatened Mr. Kerik with jail if he ever again violated the consent order barring parties in the case from revealing confidential information about it.
Last month, Judge Robinson asked the defense team to submit briefs about the e-mail message from Mr. Modafferi.
“My thought is the relationship between Mr. Modafferi and Mr. Kerik has little to do with legal counsel,” the judge said at the time. “He’s hired Mr. Modafferi as a propagandist and chief fund-raiser.”
On Tuesday, Michael F. Bachner, a lawyer for Mr. Kerik, argued that the consent order was vague. Defense lawyers said that the e-mail message that Mr. Kerik sent to Mr. Modafferi was labeled “confidential” and that Mr. Kerik believed that Mr. Modafferi would understand that it could not be made public.
“There is no way that Mr. Kerik would engage in conduct that was bound to be discovered, and he had no reason to anger this court,” Mr. Bachner said.
Mr. Bachner later added, “Mr. Modafferi ran with that ball on his own, which nobody condoned.”
Judge Robinson’s rejection of that position went on at considerable length. He quoted much of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 29 in likening Mr. Kerik to a man who, “in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,” laments his “outcast state.”
Several people involved in the case said Mr. Kerik was to be held at the Westchester County Department of Correction jail in Valhalla, which has a section reserved for federal prisoners. A spokesman for the United States Marshal’s Service could not confirm his location.
Thomas A. Reppetto, who co-wrote a history of the Police Department, said Mr. Kerik was the first former city police commissioner to be put in jail, and would be the first to be convicted of a crime should he be found guilty.
“There have been investigations, but nothing like this,” said Mr. Reppetto.
