U.S. Attorneys Office in Hartford. Photo: Google

A Boston-based attorney has filed contempt of court motions in a trade secrets case against the U.S. Attorney's Office in Hartford, two federal prosecutors and one investigator, claiming they did not hand over hundreds of witness statements that could have cleared her client.

Defense counsel Patricia DeJuneas alleged prosecutors withheld evidence that would have exonerated electrical engineer Jared Sparks. Her client is awaiting sentencing after being found guilty on charges related to allegations he'd stolen files from his former employer, a defense contractor that built unmanned underwater vehicles for the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research and deployable ice buoys for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This was evidence we were entitled to have," DeJuneas said. "They thwarted our ability to effectively prepare for trial. Once we discovered that misconduct, they engaged in a pervasive effort to cover up what they had done."

DeJuneas' motion asks U.S. District Judge Alvin Thompson of the District of Connecticut to hold the U.S. Attorney's Office in Hartford in contempt, along with investigators Kebharu Smith, Jacabed Rodriguez-Coss and Christopher Mehring.

Smith is a senior trial attorney with the Department of Justice. No one from the Department of Justice responded to a request for comment. Rodriguez-Coss—now an attorney with the Puerto Rico-based law firm Melendez Torres Law—and Mehring, who was at the time a special agent in the New Haven offices of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, did not respond to a request for comment. And Tom Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, declined to comment.

The government has at least 14 days to file a response to the motion in United States of America v. Sparks. As of Monday afternoon, no response had been filed.

DeJuneas is alleging the attorneys and investigators acted unethically, and claims the case calls other prosecutions into question.

In her 21-page motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, the Sibbison, DeJuneas & Allen founding partner alleges the attorneys failed to notify the defense about 14 prosecution witnesses.

Those witnesses, DeJuneas said, included a high-ranking engineer with the Office of Naval Research, the president of the company where Sparks used to work, and a manager at Spawar, a quasi-military organization, which has since changed its name to Naval Information Warfare Systems Command.

"If we knew who these individuals were, we could have better prepared for cross-examination," DeJuneas said. "Several of those 14 witnesses had exculpatory information that was never provided to us before and that information could have exonerated my client."

For example, a high-ranking official of the Office of Naval Research said "that he personally used a DropBox to accept proposals from NASA," DeJuneas said.

"That could have exonerated my client because the prosecution took the position that simply using DropBox created a threat to national security," the attorney said. "There is a lot of evidence that, taken together, certainly calls into question whether indictments should have been brought."

An Oklahoma resident, Sparks sentencing has not been scheduled or discussed.

"He is home and working and thriving in his new job as an engineer," said DeJuneas, who defended the case with colleague Ashley Allen.

Sparks' co-defendant, Jay Williams, was acquitted on all counts.

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