A hearing into the Justice Department’s firing of lead El Rukn prosecutor William Hogan Jr. opened Monday with a key figure in the inquiry testifying he warned Hogan of damaging information in October 1989, two years before the prosecutor acknowledges learning the details.
Lawrence Rosenthal, also a former assistant U.S. attorney, said he raised concerns with Hogan after receiving a memo that disclosed two cooperating witnesses in the El Rukn trials had tested positive for drugs while being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop.
Rosenthal said when he told Hogan he believed the information had to be disclosed to defense lawyers, Hogan responded that he didn’t regard it as a problem.
After a three-year probe, the Justice Department fired Hogan last year, concluding he either “intentionally or negligently” failed to disclose the positive drug tests. Rosenthal’s allegation, first aired five years ago in federal court, was a critical blow to Hogan’s claim he did not learn of the positive drug tests until 1991.
The charges that the case was mishandled led federal court judges to reverse many of the convictions against El Rukn gang members, although most were convicted again in retrials.
Hogan, who has denied any misconduct, has appealed his firing and Rosenthal was among the first witnesses called Monday to testify by the Justice Department at a hearing before a U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board judge.
Rosenthal, now a deputy corporation counsel for the City of Chicago, said he had been reluctant to testify against Hogan at hearings in 1992 and 1993 because he considered him “a very fine prosecutor and a friend.”
On Tuesday, Hogan’s lawyers are expected to attack Rosenthal’s credibility, accusing him of making false allegations of drug use against another former federal prosecutor in 1988.
Rosenthal said he received the memo about the drug use by the two El Rukns because he was investigating a related probe of a judge accused of fixing a gang-related double murder.
Although their conversation took place many years ago, Rosenthal said Monday that he had “a vivid recollection” of Hogan expressing some frustration over what he was expected to do about the news about the positive drug tests.
“What do you expect me to do?” he quoted Hogan as saying. “These people are addicts. I don’t control security there,” referring to the MCC.
Rosenthal also said he had recalled for the first time during a recent deposition of a discussion about the memo in 1989 with Dean Polales, another assistant U.S. attorney with whom he was prosecuting an unrelated case.
Hogan has suggested Rosenthal mistakenly recalled telling him about the memo in 1989 when it was actually Polales.
