Long, long time ago,
I can still remember how that
Music used to make me smile...
I guess it's a comment on where your life has been when you can remember a federal judge who has now passed away, William H. Pauley III. Not because I really met him, but I did in a way, when I testified twice for the prosecution in the Niels H. Lauersen M.D. trails in 2001 and 2002, both of which he presided at. There were two trials because the first ended in a hung jury. The second trial found Dr. Lauersen guilty, and later sentenced to at least 7 years.
The Lauersen trial is not mentioned in Judge Pauley's NYT obit, likely because the judge, many years later, sentenced Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen to 3-years in prison for what he called a "veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct." Mr. Cohen, who represented himself, was also ordered to pay $2 million in fines, restitution and forfeitures after pleading guilty to "helping to buy the silence of two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump by paying the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000, which the government considered an illegal campaign contribution, and orchestrating a $150,000 payment to American Media, the parent company of The National Enquirer, to a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal, which prosecutors labeled an illegal corporate donation."
It is understandable why mention of a conviction of someone associated with Donald Trump would gain mention over a doctor who was convicted of insurance fraud. Dr. Lauersen's offenses seem tame compared to Mr. Cohen's, but he did report on insurance forms uncovered fertility services as covered services, a deception which netted well over a million dollars and affected several health insurers, including the one I worked for.
Dr. Lauersen's sentence was over 7 years, and was appealed by the prosecutors and made even longer. Meanwhile, Mr. Cohen was released early to home confinement due to the Covid outbreak. Very hard to compare the two trials. The two Lauersen trials were in between the events of 9/11, a good reason for distinct memories. (Dr. Lauersen passed away in July 2020.)
For the first trial, I appeared in court after reporting to work at my job on the 29th floor of One World Trade Center. For the sentencing, I arrived at the court from home on October 15, 2001 because there was no office to go to, and we were not yet assigned to temporary space. We always live in interesting times.
I remember at the sentencing Alan Dershowitz's brother Nathan gave what appeared to me to be a rambling presentation trying to mitigate the sentence. I know I couldn't follow the reasoning, and I doubt Judge Pauley did either, because he listened politely, and then said what he planned to anyway.
Dr. Lauersen was always well represented by name-plate counsel. His first lawyer was Ted Wells, famous for the Scooter Libby trail. His second lawyer was Gerald Shargel, a top New York defense attorney who sometimes represented organized crime figures, notably John Gotti. Nathan Dershowitz was brought in to make a sentencing plea.
Dr. Lauersen himself was a celebrity. Geraldo Rivera did a piece on him and dubbed him the Dyno Gyno for his success at in-vitro fertilizations for some notable celebrities like Liv Ullman and Celine Dion. His downfall was malpractice cases and the insurance fraud in which he tried to play Robin Hood for woman who were having a procedure that was generally not covered by their health insurance contracts. He reported these procedures as covered cyst removals so often that for the company I worked for he was a total outlier in cyst removals. Many things helped convict him, including data.
And like Judge Pauley's sound bite of characterizing Michael Cohen's offenses as a "veritable smorgasbord," at Dr. Lauersen's sentencing he said of him, "your fall from prestige has been Faustian in its dimensions." The quote appeared on the front page of the NYT the next day in the story about the sentencing. Judges speak for the ages.
One of the aspects from Sam Roberts's obit was a quote from Judge Eleni M. Roumel of the United States Court of Federal Claims, who had been Judge Pauley's law clerk, "what really distinguished him was his innate sense of fairness..."
Perhaps that was on display at the sentencing when Judge Pauley ordered the co-prosecutor to go outside the courtroom to find out what constituted the difference in federal prison when you were being considered for minimum, low, or medium security confinement, since at the moment that was not known by the prosecution.
To me it seemed an odd time to try and find this out, and how the hell was the co-prosecutor going to come back with the right answer? Well, he did, and I think it had something to do with the level of fencing around the facility as security and the ease or lack of ease prisoners could walk around the facility. Whatever it was, Judge Pauley was satisfied with the answer.
I read that Judge Pauley had achieved "senior status in 2018." This meant he was semi-retired and could have a reduced workload. I remember a judge's seniority being mentioned at the first trial as to determining the courtroom his cases got heard in, and it was commented on by the lead prosecutor that the courtroom the proceedings for the first trial were held in was the same one that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried in in the 1950s.
Long, long time ago...
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