Amador faces new ethics, contempt charges

Kim Smith

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2001 | 10:50 a.m.

Defense attorney Michael Amador may soon be facing contempt of court charges or an ethics complaint as a result of revelations the lawyer's former secretary made to District Judge Joseph Bonaventure during a private meeting three weeks ago.

Bonaventure and the attorneys in the Margaret Rudin murder case spoke with Amador's former secretary on July 19 to discuss the allegations involving the much-criticized attorney.

Annie Jackson says Amador took on the Rudin case solely to further his career and went so far as to feed negative information about Rudin to the National Enquirer to drum up interest in the case for a book he was planning to write.

Jackson further alleges that Amador lied when he repeatedly told Bonaventure he does not have media rights to Rudin's life story and began writing a book about the case in the middle of the trial.

Rudin was convicted May 1 of first-degree murder for the December 1994 death of her millionaire husband, Ronald Rudin.

Bonaventure is scheduled to decide Aug. 24 if Rudin is entitled to a new trial. If not, Rudin could receive a life sentence on Aug. 31.

The meeting in Bonaventure's chambers was at the request of prosecutors and came one day before Rudin's attorneys filed a motion for a new trial.

Many of Jackson's allegations were revealed in that motion because defense attorneys hope to show that Amador was ineffective, but prosecutors wanted the allegations aired before Bonaventure for entirely different reasons.

Chief Deputy District Attorneys Chris Owens and Gary Guymon learned of Jackson's allegations after she telephoned them to request a meeting. Her story substantiated rumors the pair had been hearing about Amador since well before the trial began.

Options discussed -- the transcripts of the meeting were released by Bonaventure's office Wednesday -- included convening a contempt of court hearing, filing a state bar complaint, doing nothing or investigating further.

Bonaventure said he intended to reflect on what was said before deciding. His law clerk, Al Lasso, said Wednesday that no decision has been made.

Amador insists he has done nothing wrong.

"I have been advised by my counsel not to make any comments to the media, but let me assure you I've received no funds from any source for any legal fees for Ms. Rudin," Amador said. "Nor do I now, nor have I ever had any interest in C & M Productions, Weaselsearch.com, nor any book or media rights."

Jackson alleges that she found three separate contracts pertaining to the Rudin trial in Amador's office, in addition to information that led her to believe Amador was behind a dot.com company that sponsored a Rudin website.

One of the contracts was between Rudin and C & M Productions, a company in which Jackson said Amador was a partner.

When rumors began to circulate that Amador was behind Weaselsearch.com, Jackson alleges the attorney had her write and back-date a letter to one of his partners saying he could no longer be affiliated with the website.

A few weeks later, Jackson claims, Amador handed out several copies of the National Enquirer during a Christmas Eve get-together. Inside the magazine was an article written by one of Amador's alleged partners in weaselsearch.com, John Connolly.

"I said it was so damaging to Margaret and a lot of stuff, it was a terrible article. And he said, 'But it created media attention and got people interested in the case,' " Jackson said.

Jackson said she believes Connolly is working on a book. She claims that Amador told a juror in the case that she was in danger and needed to come to his office to speak with FBI agents when, in fact, he just wanted her to talk to Connolly.

The juror in question, Coreen Kovacs, was the last of the 12 jurors to vote guilty.

Jackson told Bonaventure she is disgusted.

"Everyone seems to have a piece of this whole thing, and it's very sad. Here's a lady's life on the line and all these people are concerned about are their books and movies and money," Jackson said.