Awand wants contempt hearing to be public

Convicted former medical consultant Howard Awand wants a federal judge to conduct his upcoming contempt hearing in public.

His Los Angeles lawyer, Harland Braun, said he made a formal demand this week for a public hearing to protect Awand's due process rights.

U.S. District Judge James Mahan has set a closed-door session at 11 a.m. Monday to decide whether to hold Awand in contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating fraud within the legal and medical professions.

There is no record of the contempt proceeding listed on the court docket, and all papers filed in the case are under seal.

The hearing was scheduled at the request of prosecutors, who want Awand to provide testimony about lawyers targeted in the investigation. Awand, who is in federal custody, ignored an order from Mahan and refused to answer questions when he was hauled before the grand jury on Nov. 10.

"The reason you have a public trial is so there will not be secret proceedings to throw people in jail without public scrutiny," Braun said.

The U.S. attorney's own manual, he added, states that there is a "strong presumption against closed proceedings" in federal court.

"In this case, I think the government is abusing the grand jury proceeding because any crimes they're investigating are beyond the statute of limitations," Braun said.

"What we really have here is that the U.S. attorney's office was humiliated in this case and, therefore, is just trying to punish Awand for not cooperating with them."

Natalie Collins, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, declined comment.

Prosecutors consider Awand, 66, the central figure in a network of lawyers and physicians that might have defrauded clients of millions of dollars. Doctors within the group were alleged to have been shielded from malpractice lawsuits, while group members shared kickbacks from legal settlements.

Awand was sentenced in June to four months in prison after a conviction stemming from irregularities prosecutors uncovered in a medical malpractice case.

He is serving the sentence concurrently with a four-year term from a separate conviction for failing to pay $2.5 million in income taxes.

Witnesses who refuse to testify before a grand jury can be held in contempt until they cooperate. A witness usually is jailed for the duration of the grand jury's tenure.

If Awand is incarcerated for contempt, prosecutors are likely to argue that he should not get credit toward his sentences while he is serving the new time behind bars.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal. com or 702-380-8135 or read more courts coverage at lvlegalnews.com.