COURTROOM BEEF
Defense attorney allegedly told ‘Go f**k yourself’ by prosecutor after murder acquittal
A gesture of mutual respect turned sour at the completion of a murder trial.
“I went to shake Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor James Scott’s hand and he told me to, ‘Go f**k myself,’” defense attorney Robin Lord said Tuesday afternoon, following the acquittal of her client, DeSean Clark, on murder charges. “It just shows that the lack of professional in the prosecutor’s office is very disturbing.”
Lord said Scott, who lists himself as a supervising assistant prosecutor on his LinkedIn page, has never been crude to her before.
“There were several legal issues that I called him out on for the course of this trial and I guess he took offense to it and he told me to ‘Go f**k myself,’” the prominent Trenton defense attorney said.
When reached by phone on Tuesday afternoon and asked about his alleged remark, Scott responded, “I did shake Ms. Lord’s hand” after letting out a breath of frustration.
“Did Ms. Lord tell you all the things that she alleged that I did during the trial that were all a lie? Did she tell you all of the things in which she claimed that were lies? Did she tell you that when she was in front of the jury, she lied to them? Did she tell you any of that?” Scott asked the reporter.
The reporter asked the prosecutor to explain further since the newspaper did not cover the trial, but Scott declined to elaborate.
“My point is she didn’t tell you any of that, did she?” Scott said. “I don’t have any further comment.”
Scott, who joined the prosecutor’s office in June 2002, is also a man of the cloth, shocking Lord even more by his actions. The prosecutor is listed as a deacon at The Church of Saint Ann, a Roman Catholic Church in Lawrence.
“He’s a man of God, professional assistant prosecutor, and he’s is and telling me to ‘Go f*ck myself’ after a not guilty verdict,” Lord said. “I was shocked. Am I offended by it? I’m more offended with the fact that my client has been in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.”
Lord contended Scott had trouble controlling himself throughout the trial. She said he was throwing pens and loudly screaming objections to her questions.
“He’s going through a midlife crisis,” she said. “I would hate to confess my sins to him if he was my priest.”
As for the case, Lord’s client was arrested for the New Year’s Day murder of James Threadgill, 54, of Trenton, in 2013.
Threadgill was allegedly shot in the leg and head after a dispute about someone cutting the line at Passion’s nightclub on East State Street at approximately 1 a.m. The suspect then fled the scene. The incident was captured on surveillance tape, allowing police to identify the suspect, whom they thought was Clark and he was arrested at his Ewing apartment two weeks later. Clark was charged with murder and weapons offenses before the jury set him free.
“This man was in jail,” Lord said. “Imagine he was in jail for five years for a crime he did not commit. He’s been in jail since Jan. 17, 2013, five years on this bullsh*t type of evidence, and then prosecutor tells me to ‘Go f**k myself.’”
Asked if she would take any action against Scott for his comment, the defense attorney said, “No.”
“The acquittal speaks volumes,” said Lord, who is also known for suing police for misconduct and winning big cases.
Lord is also not a patron saint in the courtroom. In her office hangs a framed Trentonian story from when she left the public defender’s office and went into private practice.
Painting her as unafraid and brash, the article told the story of when Lord flipped the bird to a judge during one of her trials.
When asked about her own dustup with a judge, Lord said, “That was 27 years ago.”