In the courtroom...
It took the span of a workweek for a major development in the Juliana Redding murder case to reach the general public. The headline concerns what unfolded during a court hearing on Monday, August 9th. That’s when a Superior Court judge ordered that more than $800,000 in assets be returned to Dr. Munir Uwaydah. Turns-out that’s not all that the judge had to say.
A detailed account of Monday’s three-hour hearing appeared a day later in an August 10 article published in the Daily Journal, a publication squarely focused on court and legal news. The Daily Journal is available online. However, accessing the online content requires a subscription.
On Friday, a public relations consultant who says he’s been hired by an associate of Dr. Uwaydah provided Beyond90Seconds.com with a scanned copy of the Daily Journal’s article. The consultant said that he had also provided the Los Angeles Times with a copy of the same article. More from the consultant—who agreed to be interviewed by this blog—in a moment. First, let’s focus on what reportedly happened during Monday’s hearing.
Daily Journal staff writer Sandra Hernandez tells Beyond90Seconds.com that she attended Monday’s hearing. Her story’s lead paragraph sets a discouraging tone for the prosecution’s day in court:
“A Superior Court Judge ordered District Attorney Steve Cooley’s office on Monday to return assets seized last month on allegations of fraud, slamming prosecutors for failing to bring charges or provide further evidence.”
-Daily Journal, August 10, 2010
The article includes several direct quotations from Judge Craig Richman aimed at two deputy attorneys. Those remarks from the bench include:
“The problem is how long do you want me to hold these assets?”
And,
“This is a very difficult position I’m in. Due process demands a hearing…to determine whether these assets were stolen.”
The Daily Journal also reported that Richman had “blasted” prosecutors during a previous hearing held on August 5. The judge was reportedly upset that prosecutors had sought to turn over Uwaydah’s assets to the U.S. Secret Service. During the August 5 hearing, Richman reportedly “chastised prosecutors for filing an ex parte motion in the case before another judge on the day he (Richman) had indicated he would be out of court attending his brother’s memorial service.”
Citing transcripts, the Daily Journal goes on to attribute the following statement to Richman (a former prosecutor):
“I have to be frank, at this moment I am shaking with anger. I have never in my entire legal career—and certainly in my judicial career—felt as slimed by, frankly, the very office that I grew up in.”
Beyond90Seconds.com had decided not to publish the scanned copy of the Daily Journal’s story without that publication’s permission. However, in researching a discrepancy in the article’s spelling of the judge’s name (the first reference is “Richmond,”) late Friday night, I discovered a similar scanned copy of the same Daily Journal article now available for download. The download is available in a blog post published Friday in what appears to be a recently-created site supporting Uwaydah. The author of the post is simply identified as “A friend of Doctor Munir Uwaydah.”
Perhaps Mark Andrew Zwartynski knows the identity of “A friend of Doctor Munir Uwaydah.” Zwartynksi is the Dallas-based public relations consultant who provided Beyond90Seconds.com with a copy of the Daily Record’s story. He is chairman and chief executive officer of the The Mark Andrew Group. He told me that his background includes extensive work for professional sports teams and high-profile professional athletes.
“I am a behind-the-scenes public relations consultant and a personal brand developer and manager. In other words, I will work with high net-worth individuals on their public profile. I am not a spin doctor. I don’t work in that regard. If Dr. Uwaydah were guilty, then I would not work with him,” Zwartynski said.
Friday’s interview was not my first communication with Zwartynski. On June 27, he contacted me by e-mail and requested an opportunity to speak with me about the case. In a subsequent conversation, Zwartynski told me that he hoped to give me a statement about the case in the near future. That moment arrived on Friday.
I asked Zwartynski if Uwaydah was currently in the United States.
“Dr. Uwaydah is not on the run, first and foremost,” he began. “Dr. Uwaydah is an international businessman who owns businesses in Germany and France. I do not know if he is in the country at this moment.”
To be clear, Zwartynski says he’s not a member of Uwaydah’s defense team. He said that he had been hired by an associate of Uwaydah in mid-June, two days after the arrest of Juliana Redding’s accused killer, Kelly Soo Park (Prosecutors contend that Uwaydah has paid Park hundreds of thousands of dollars and that he allegedly refers to Park as his “female James Bond”).
Zwartynski said that he has had only one conversation with Uwaydah, but communicates on a regular basis with the doctor’s associate and attorneys.
When asked who’s paying his fee, Zwartynski replied, “I’m being compensated, as the attorneys are, by the associate.”
Zwartynski took aim at reports (based on a court document) that there had been a “business deal gone bad” between Uwaydah and Juliana Redding’s father.
“There was absolutely no business deal there. Dr. Uwaydah was simply trying to introduce Miss Redding’s father to a company for a job. And it just so happened that they could not come to terms on their own part, meaning the company, which was a pharmaceutical company, I believe…The negotiations were between that pharmaceutical company and Miss Redding’s father. And it was just like anybody else applying for a job. What I understand is that they just could not come to terms on compensation. Dr. Uwaydah had long-since that point stepped away from that particular situation. So, there was no business deal between Dr. Uwaydah and Juliana Redding’s father. It was just him (Uwaydah) trying to help the guy get a job.”
Zwartynski contends the judge’s order to return Uwaydah’s assets further supports the doctor’s position that he is innocent.
“My God, we live in America. That’s my point. I mean, they seize accounts and then the judge slams the prosecutors for failure to bring charges and provide further evidence. What’s going on here? You’re seizing accounts and then you don’t charge him? I understand (investigators) might want to ask him some questions, but they don’t have anything on him.
“If you’re going to take all his money without charging him, I think that’s illegal. This is just a personal opinion, but if you’re going to seize someone’s accounts, don’t you think you ought to charge them with something?”
Asked if Uwaydah is considering whether to file a civil suit against the state or Santa Monica police department, Zwartynski replied:
“I cannot speak for the attorneys (about the possibility of a lawsuit). More than anything else, the attorneys are trying to figure out where the District Attorney’s Office is going with this (case). I can’t speculate about the attorney’s forward thought about whether to file a civil suit.”
*note: Friday evening’s Los Angeles Time’s online story, Judge unfreezes physician’s bank accounts in model slaying case, includes reaction from the District Attorney’s Office.
I wonder what judge Craig Richman thinks about the search warrants he signed for Martin Boags. I sure hope he feels” slimed” by them and maybe feels bad about what he did to the Spitzberg family by issuing those illegally obtained warrants.. Nice to see a judge feeling bad about corruption, for once.