The court of appeals affirmed in part a district court judgment, remanding for an evidentiary review. The court held, based on well-established precedent, that the district court erred in refusing to compel use immunity for a defense witness based on the district court’s conclusion that it could not do so absent a finding of prosecutorial misconduct.
As a lobbyist for a software company, Brent Wilkes met with members of Congress to urge purchases of his company’s document conversion system to government agencies. Later, he quit his job and drafted a congressional proposal for a government-funded program to convert documents into electronic format, the Automated Data Conversion Systems (“ADCS Program”). He started his own company, ACDS, Inc. Wilkes hired a consultant, Mitchell Wade, to assist ADCS in obtaining government contracts. Michael Williams was also hired as vice president of operations for ADCS.