The Clients of Linda Pence: Carl Liebowitz

Ah, the miracle of Google.

Meet Carl Liebowitz, a lawyer and “promoter of tax shelters.” In 1984, a grand jury started looking into the legalities of Liebowitz’s tax shelters. Two years later, Liebowitz became concerned that his business partner, Gary Van Waeyenberghe, was going to testify against him before the grand jury.

So Carl Liebowitz went to a guy named Donald Wrobel and hired him for a hit on his partner’s life. Wrobel tried to murder the partner, failed, and was eventually arrested. Wrobel and Liebowitz were eventually convicted.

Court documents indicate that Liebowitz lured his partner to a phone booth to receive a call from him at an appointed hour. Wrobel, armed with a rifle and a pistol, was hiding nearby. The phone in the booth rang. Liebowitz, on the call, spoke to his partner, saying, “I hear you’ve been talking to the feds.” At that moment, Wrobel fired at the phone booth, shattering the glass, but missing Van Waeyenberghe.

(Read more after the leap)

Phone records later showed that Liebowitz had made calls to the phone booth in question from his own telephone. Wrobel and Van Waeyenberghe eventually corroborated each others’ testimony. Further, as the Seventh Circuit ruling noted, “tape-recorded conversations between Wrobel and Leibowitz that allude unmistakably to the existence of the murder-for-hire scheme.”

Liebowitz, who was eventually disbarred, was found guilty and set about a series of appeals to get himself out of prison. These appeals and court documents are all publicly available (here, here, here, here, and here; they provide interesting insights into the case).

Liebowitz and Wrobel somehow ended up in the same prison, where Wrobel suddenly decided to change his mind about his earlier testimony. Wrobel signed affidavits–prepared for him by Liebowitz–recanting his testimony. This led to an appeal by Liebowitz.

The appeal was eventually denied (remember all of the other evidence I mentioned above, like the phone records, the corroborated testimony, and the tape recordings?). The Seventh Circuit took a dim view of testimony that was suddenly recanted, in prison, in the presence of a fellow prisoner who was going to benefit from the sudden change of heart. Strange things happen in prisons, after all.

Carl Liebowitz’s lawyer in this appeal? You guessed it. Attorney General candidate Linda Pence.

Sure, lots of lawyers defend scum from time to time. It’s part of being a lawyer. But those lawyers tend to not want to become the attorney general. There’s just something about Linda Pence. She’s always defending these characters and it’s not like this is noble public defender work or anything.

From corrupt state senators tied to the misuse of state funds (and tax evasion), to a co-defendant in the biggest corruption case in recent Indiana history, to shady businessmen that try to whack their partners, Linda Pence has this habit of showing up to defend the shady types. She also has this habit of trying to hide her past from Hoosier voters.

Why on earth would anyone want to vote for an attorney general–a good guy if there ever was one–with such a record of fighting hard (and often failing) to defend the bad guys?