It is sometimes called a “show and tell” indictment or “trial by lectern,” but it violates federal guidelines and “it erodes the presumption of innocence and subverts the requirement for a fair trial,” according to the legal expert Abbe David Lowell, a law professor at Columbia Law School and Georgetown Law Center, writing in a Washington Post op-ed. Lowell wrote, “By the time a trial starts, would-be jurors have been tainted by hearing the worst allegations against a defendant with no rebuttal, and judges can easily form initial opinions that could carry over to their rulings.” The Sept. 26 Department of Justice 20-minute publicity stunt/press conference announcing the indictment of New York Mayor Eric Adams, using what used to be called “trial evidence” which has not been tested in court, has blurred the line between indictment and conviction. This is now standard operating procedure at the FBI, DOJ, and even local prosecutor’s offices.
In the past the Justice Department banned these showy spectacles and even the simplest news release had to follow strict guidelines. In 1977 U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell issued a directive to all prosecutors, writing: “In order to avoid any unfairness or appearance of unfairness I have directed the department’s Office of Public Information to confine news releases on indictments to the bare essentials of the charge and the defendants without detailing the allegations of the grand jury.” Bell warned that these news releases “carry a potential for prejudicing a case against a criminal defendant as they do repeat charges which have not been proven in court without offering the defendants any opportunity to dispute them.” If this is the level of concern that Bell had for simple news releases, one can only imagine what he would say about the DOJ publicity stunt against Mayor Adams.
The televised DOJ extravaganza against Mayor Adams on Sept. 26 included dozens of color photos of “luxury hotel suites” (even photos of the bathroom), photos of the disputed skyscraper of the future Turkish consulate, and excerpts of the mayor’s correspondence. The press conference used highly charged language including phrases such as “luxury travel,” “foreign influence,” “corrupt relationships,” and “grave breach of public trust.” Every dollar of every disputed transaction was described in detail. An FBI supervisor and Jocelyn E. Strauber, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation were invited to add their claims of Adams’s “perver[sion] of greed, and dishonesty” and breach of “integrity, transparency and dedication.”
