Ex-Halfmoon supervisor seeks to suppress FBI interviews

PHOTOGRAPHER: Justin Mason

Statements former Halfmoon town supervisor Melinda Wormuth made while meeting with federal investigators on four occasions in August 2013 shouldn’t be used against her in an influence-peddling case because she was never read her rights, according to a motion filed by her lawyer in U.S. District Court.

In a 12-page motion filed Monday, defense attorney E. Stewart Jones said Wormuth met with at least two FBI agents on four occasions between Aug. 7 and 14, 2013 — twice at the Hampton Inn in Colonie and twice at the bureau’s Albany headquarters — without ever being formally read a Miranda warning. He said Wormuth didn’t believe she could leave the interview or not answer the questions being posed to her by the FBI, which led her to believe she was either being detained or would be taken into custody.

“Interactions on each … [occasion] were inherently coercive, intimidating and overbearing, creating a criminal charging atmosphere, instilling fear and effectively establishing a custodial environment as reasonably perceived and understood by Mrs. Wormuth during the process of information instillation or extraction by well-established FBI interrogation techniques,” Jones wrote in the motion. “Mrs. Wormuth, once engaged with agents, had no sense that she was free not to speak or free to leave until, at the end of the interrogation process on each of the occasions, she was allowed to go.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Tuesday.

Jones also hinted the government moved to entrap his client and asked the federal judge overseeing the case to release grand jury instructions given prior to her indictment in October 2013. Though acknowledging the government hasn’t disclosed all of its discovery, he said a report summarizing Wormuth’s interactions with agents shows they persuaded her to lobby local state legislators for the legalization of mixed martial arts.

“The central elements of the plan were created exclusively by the government and carried forward by the government, ultimately snaring Mrs. Wormuth in the government’s crafted and sponsored plan.”

In addition, Jones wants the court to suppress any evidence garnered from Wormuth’s unlocked vehicle while she met with FBI agents inside the Hampton Inn in Albany on Aug. 7. He said Wormuth gave her vehicle to a valet at the hotel under the advice of an agent, but never authorized a search and returned to find that someone had rifled through her belongings.

In signed statements accompanying the motion, Wormuth called her first two-hour meeting with the FBI a “custodial, frightening and intimidating circumstance and environment” during which she didn’t feel free to leave. After she was allowed to go, she claimed she found her belongings inside her vehicle in disarray.

“While I don’t believe and can’t identify anything that was taken, I don’t know what information was copied, what notes were made, or the full extent to which the informational fruits of the search have been used by the government,” she stated. “However, I do know that there was information in the vehicle that was subsequently disclosed as evidence alleged to be supportive of the joint investigation and prosecution of me by the United States Attorney’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office.”

Jones said the motion “speaks for itself” and declined to comment further. Prosecutors have until Jan. 19 to answer the motion.

Last month, a jury trial in the matter was scheduled for Jan. 26 before U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe.

Wormuth is accused of using town letterhead to urge Assemblyman James Tedisco, R-Glenville, and state Sen. Kathy Marchione, R-Halfmoon, to support the legalization of MMA. She allegedly received $7,000 in three separate payments from a promoter for trying to peddle her influence, which also included urging county supervisors to support professional MMA.

While under federal scrutiny, Wormuth allegedly admitted to cashing thousands of dollars in checks for her campaign fund without accounting for the money. State investigators later determined she misused $6,250 in contributions after losing the Republican endorsement in April 2013.