The Incompetence of David Soares

If the name David Soares sounds familiar, it's because he's the Albany County District Attorney who was investigating the steroids scandal and who looked the other way as New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) abused his power and discretion by using State Troopers to investigate Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R).

It turns out that his investigations on the steroids case were botched, forcing charges to be dropped.

A judge threw out criminal indictments against the central figures in a wide-ranging national steroids investigation on Thursday, citing a series of blunders and missteps by prosecutors for the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares.

Mr. Soares’s investigation, which began three and a half years ago, has spanned at least four states and involved at least seven federal and state agencies. It has so far resulted in 17 guilty pleas from people who prosecutors alleged were involved in distributing steroids and other performance enhancers to thousands of customers around the country, including sports stars and other celebrities.

But Judge Stephen W. Herrick, of Albany County Court, found that mistakes by the prosecution had prejudiced the case against five people associated with Florida-based Signature Pharmacy, which prosecutors had alleged was the supplier of at least $10 million worth of controlled substances sold to customers in New York. They are Naomi Loomis and Robert Loomis, the husband and wife who own the pharmacy; Mr. Loomis’s brother, Kenneth Michael Loomis, a pharmacist at the company; and two former employees, Kirk Calvert and Tony Palladino.

As for the Spitzer investigation, he refused to bring charges against Spitzer, despite evidence of malfeasance. Soares took kid gloves to Spitzer and his underlings in attempting to sort out what happened, and which reveal that Soares had little interest in rooting out the corruption and abuse of power in the Governor's office.

Albany County voters better look closely at who they want to enforce the law in their county. Soares has turned out to be an abysmal failure. Soares is already trying to get opponents bounced from the November ticket.

UPDATE:
The police union has come out in support of Soares' challenger, Republican Roger Cusick. Soares intends to appeal the judge's decision.

In his decision, Herrick characterized the case as unwieldy, complex and riddled with problems in the manner in which it was presented to two separate grand juries since January 2007. In all, there have been four indictments against the Signature defendants, with many of the counts being dismissed earlier by the court.

He said prosecutors' instructions to the grand jury were "misleading" when the panel was not told that earlier charges had been thrown out.

Herrick did not address the merits of the criminal charges in his decision, which focused largely on how evidence and charges were presented to the grand juries that handed up the indictments.

"The court finds that the amorphous quality of the evolving indictments, coupled with the cursory and inadequate instructions in the fourth presentment have impaired the integrity of the Grand Jury proceedings to such a degree that dismissal is warranted," Herrick wrote.

Guilty pleas by more than a dozen doctors and individuals connected with wellness centers involved are not affected.