A long-serving prosecutor in Miami has stepped down after a judge found evidence that state investigators tampered with witnesses in a death penalty case against a gang leader who was sentenced to death for a quadruple murder two decades ago.
Michael Von Zamft, who prosecuted numerous high-profile criminal cases in Miami’s 11th Judicial Circuit for nearly three decades, allegedly granted special privileges such as conjugal visits to jailhouse informants in exchange for their testimony.
The veteran prosecutor resigned this week after Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Andrea Ricker Wolfson disqualified him and another prosecutor, Stephen Mitchell, from the resentencing trial of convicted murderer Corey Smith, the former boss of Liberty City’s John Doe gang, which plied Miami’s predominantly Black neighborhoods with crack cocaine throughout the late 1990s.
Wolfson made the stunning ruling following a lengthy hearing in which Smith’s defense team presented new evidence in an attempt to secure a new trial for Smith and remove the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office from the case due to “egregious misconduct.”
Witnesses claimed they were regularly given food, drinks, and cigarettes, as well as private visits with sexual partners, court documents said.
At least one witness had a sentence reduced in exchange for bogus testimony, the judge found.
“During the hearing, it became apparent there was a serious issue regarding possible witness testimony manipulation by the Assistant State Attorneys on this case — not only in the past, but also in the present,” Wolfson said, according to The Miami Herald.
Mitchell was dismissed from the case because he argued that there had been no unethical conduct, suggesting that he shared Von Zamft’s “philosophy of winning at all costs,” the judge said.
Joshua Hubner, another state prosecutor who helped bring the case against Smith, resigned in February.
Despite the findings in the 15-page ruling, Wolfson…
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