02092012 - News Article - Cantrell claims ineffective counsel - ROBERT CANTRELL

Cantrell claims ineffective counsel
Post-Tribune (IN)
February 9, 2012
Former North Township employee Robert Cantrell is making another attempt to cut his prison sentence and drop his convictions on honest service charges.

According to a motion to vacate his conviction, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, Cantrell is arguing that the four honest service counts he was found guilty of be dropped.

Cantrell was found guilty in 2008 in connection with money he received from a friend’s addiction services program that was contracted with the North Township.

Cantrell has already appealed his conviction to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled against him in 2010. However, he now argues that he had ineffective counsel during both his federal jury trial and during his appeal. He claims attorney Kevin Milner, who represented him during the jury trial, improperly decided not to present any defense for Cantrell. Milner at the time had argued for acquittal because the government had never established that Cantrell was the defendant and didn’t want to give the prosecution a chance to do so by presenting defense witnesses, according to the motion.

The motion also argues that his appeals attorney, Daniel Rubinstein, failed to argue that the honest service charges should be overturned in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on them. The court established that honest services charges could only be brought when a defendant was found to have accept a bribe or kickback. The motion says Rubinstein didn’t bring up how the central arguments that felled one of the honest service charges cases before the Supreme Court was also used in Cantrell’s case.

The motion, which does not ask that the seven other counts of insurance fraud and false income tax return that he was also found guilty on be overturned. He does ask that his sentence be recalculated, with the four honest services charges dropped.

Cantrell is serving a six and a half year prison term in Ashland, Ky. He is scheduled to be released in January 2015.