Judge: Need to know ‘great deal’ more
Hesitant to OK evidence of Teamsters’ vandalism
A federal judge concerned about a past misstep in the “Top Chef” investigation wants more information before he’ll let the U.S. Attorney’s Office infer four Teamsters were behind acts of vandalism directed at a crew for the reality TV show as payback for not hiring local union workers.
Jury selection in the men’s trial is due to start Monday. U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock yesterday ordered prosecutors Laura Kaplan and Kristina Barclay to hold off talking about tires that were slashed, a car antenna that was mangled and a car that was sprayed with an orange substance during a Local 25 picket of the hit Bravo cooking program outside a Milton restaurant three years ago. Woodlock indicated he’s skeptical witnesses can actually link the thuggery to defendants John Fidler, Michael Ross, Robert Cafarelli and Daniel Redmond.
“This case started with the misidentification of a defendant ... so that makes me a bit more sensitive about this,” Woodlock said, referring to a Local 25 member who was wrongly indicted for extortion and conspiracy after being misidentified in a photograph from the scene of the alleged crimes. The charges against that Teamster were promptly dismissed.
At the final pretrial conference yesterday, Woodlock said, “If the government wants to pursue this line of evidence, I have to know a great deal more about what the witnesses are going to say.”
Defense attorneys, in their written objection to jurors hearing about the property damage, noted that one government witness — an associate director for “Top Chef” — told the FBI that all the Teamsters present that day “kind of looked the same.”
The defense argues the vandalism evidence “serves no purpose other than to cast the Teamsters organization as a whole in a bad light and unreasonably portray all of the defendants as possible perpetrators of property damage.”
Prosecutors countered in a written filing that the director was never asked by investigators to identify the four defendants; however, he “may recognize one or more of the defendants who he observed near the cars in the courtroom at trial and should be permitted to identify that individual if he recognizes him. ... In addition, the government may, based on the evidence, ask the jury to make an inference that the damage was caused by the defendants.”
Fidler, Ross, Cafarelli and Redmond face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of charges they hassled and intimidated the production crew at a 2014 Bostonarea shoot for refusing to hire Local 25 workers.