Paul Bergrin: From Federal Prosecutor to Life Sentence

Paul Bergrin was a former federal prosecutor and prominent Newark criminal defense attorney who, in 2013, was convicted on 23 federal counts and sentenced to life in prison without parole for running a racketeering enterprise through his own law firm. A jury found that his criminal work included arranging the murder of a federal informant, plotting to kill other witnesses, trafficking cocaine, operating a prostitution service for jailed clients, and committing mortgage fraud. He is one of the few American lawyers ever convicted of ordering a witness killed to protect a client.

From Federal Prosecutor to Celebrity Defense Lawyer

Bergrin enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17 and served with the 75th Ranger Regiment before earning a law degree from Nova Southeastern Law School in Fort Lauderdale.¹²

In 1991 he opened his own criminal defense practice in Newark. The firm grew into a high-profile shop with a clientele that ran from celebrities to gang leaders and major drug traffickers, and Bergrin cultivated a flashy public image with expensive suits, luxury cars, and a reputation for rarely losing.³

The Abu Ghraib Case

Bergrin gained national attention in 2004 as civilian defense counsel for Sergeant Javal Davis, one of the U.S. soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He announced plans to put President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the witness stand, arguing that senior officials had “sidestepped the Geneva Convention” in the war on terror.⁴ He won permission from the military court to seek testimony from Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. general in Iraq, and from Gen. John Abizaid at U.S. Central Command. He ultimately negotiated a plea deal that downgraded an aggravated assault count against Davis to simple assault and dropped charges of lying to investigators and conspiracy.⁵

The case cemented his public image as a combative lawyer willing to take on powerful institutions. By then, federal investigators in New Jersey were already watching him.

“No Kemo, No Case”

The event that triggered the FBI’s investigation was the killing of Kemo Deshawn McCray, a federal informant whose information had led to the November 2003 arrest of William Baskerville, a Newark drug dealer and Bergrin’s client, on crack cocaine distribution charges.⁶

Prosecutors later alleged that after Bergrin entered Baskerville’s case, he met with Baskerville’s drug-trafficking associates, identified McCray as the cooperating witness, and told them Baskerville “would not get convicted if McCray were dead.” They quoted him distilling the advice into a phrase that would anchor the government’s case: “No Kemo, no case.”⁶⁷

On March 2, 2004, McCray was shot three times in the head at South Orange Avenue and 19th Street in Newark. Baskerville’s brother and cousin had hired a drug associate, Anthony Young, to carry out the killing for $15,000. Young later confessed and testified against Baskerville, who was convicted in May 2007 of conspiracy to murder a witness, conspiracy to retaliate against a government informant, and drug trafficking.⁶

Prosecutors came to treat “no witness, no case” as Bergrin’s operating philosophy rather than a stray remark. McCray’s killing was not the only plot they attributed to him. In 2008 they alleged Bergrin and his law partner Thomas Moran conspired with a client, Vincente Esteves, to hire a hitman to kill witnesses in a Monmouth County drug case, with Bergrin telling the hitman to make the killing “look like a robbery.”⁷ The government also obtained a recording of Bergrin instructing a Latin Kings member, who was secretly cooperating, to kill a witness and stage a home invasion: “Put on a ski mask and make it look like a robbery… It cannot under any circumstances look like a hit.”⁸ In another case, prosecutors alleged he suggested killing a witness with a lethal drug injection, a “hot shot.”¹

The 2009 Racketeering Indictment

On May 20, 2009, federal authorities unsealed a 14-count indictment charging Bergrin with leading a racketeering enterprise through his law firm.⁷ A later superseding indictment expanded the case to 33 counts.⁹ The government described “The Bergrin Law Enterprise” as a business providing both legitimate legal services and criminal ones, with the law firm and several related entities used as cover.

The alleged conduct included:

Plotting to kill witnesses who could testify against Bergrin’s clients, including the McCray killing and the Esteves plot.
Distributing multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine, including running a drug operation on behalf of incarcerated clients.
Operating a prostitution business for clients in jail and using fake employment records to evade parole restrictions.
Bribing, threatening, and coaching witnesses to provide false testimony, including coaching an eight-year-old girl who had witnessed a stabbing.
A mortgage fraud scheme involving inflated property values and fabricated buyer creditworthiness, resulting in more than $1.1 million in fraudulent mortgages that later defaulted.
Laundering criminal proceeds through the law firm and shell corporations.

The investigation was a joint effort of the FBI, the IRS Criminal Investigations division, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.³ Eight of the nine people charged in the original indictment pleaded guilty and cooperated.

The most important cooperator was Thomas Moran, a Newark lawyer in Bergrin’s office who had been considered his protégé. Moran pleaded guilty in 2010 to traveling in aid of murder conspiracy, money laundering, and a separate felony tied to his work at the firm.¹⁰ At trial, Moran testified that Bergrin routinely asked him whether associates could “get to the witnesses,” and that in 2007 Bergrin confessed to him that he had revealed McCray’s identity to Baskerville’s associates and that they “killed him three months later.”¹¹

Mistrial and the Removal of Judge Martini

The road to conviction was not straight. The original trial judge, U.S. District Judge William J. Martini, severed the McCray murder counts from the broader racketeering charges and ordered them tried first, over the government’s objection that the murder plots and other criminal acts were part of a single racketeering enterprise.

The first trial, in November 2011, focused only on the McCray murder charges. After six days of deliberation, the jury could not reach a verdict and Judge Martini declared a mistrial.¹² Martini had excluded evidence of other witness-murder plots prosecutors wanted to use, finding the risk of unfair prejudice outweighed their value.¹³

The government appealed, and on June 15, 2012, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals took the unusual step of removing Martini from the case entirely. The appellate court found he had a “misguided understanding” of how RICO prosecutions work, writing that presenting witness-tampering allegations as part of a pattern of racketeering activity “is exactly what the indictment and RICO allow,” and concluded that his “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”¹⁴¹³ The case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh.

Conviction and Life Sentence

Bergrin went to trial again in early 2013, this time on all the charges together. He chose to represent himself.³ The prosecution combined cooperating witnesses, wiretap recordings, and testimony from former associates who had pleaded guilty. Bergrin cross-examined Moran and the other cooperators aggressively, attacking their credibility and criminal histories, but the government also played recordings of him instructing a cooperating informant to carry out a murder.

On March 18, 2013, the jury found Bergrin guilty on all 23 counts, including racketeering, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, violent crimes in aid of racketeering (murder), conspiracy to murder a federal witness, aiding and abetting the murder of a federal witness, wire fraud conspiracy, facilitating prostitution, bribery, and structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.¹⁵

On September 23, 2013, Judge Cavanaugh sentenced Bergrin to life in prison without parole. The life term was mandatory on three counts: violent crimes in aid of racketeering, conspiring to murder a federal witness, and aiding and abetting the murder of a federal witness.¹⁶ He received concurrent terms of 240 months on the drug and financial counts and 60 months on the remaining charges. Cavanaugh said anything less than life would “undermine the entire criminal justice system of which the defendant was a part, and which he manipulated and abused.”¹⁷ U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman called Bergrin’s conduct “a stunning betrayal of the people he once served, the court and the rule of law.”

Appeals, Disbarment, and Where Bergrin Is Now

Bergrin has continued to fight his conviction from prison. He sought a new trial based on what he said was newly discovered evidence gathered by private investigators, claiming he had been “framed for conspiracy to commit witness murder, among other crimes.” The Third Circuit upheld the denial of that request in a decision reported in April 2022.¹⁸

The Supreme Court of New Jersey formally disbarred Bergrin on June 27, 2017, following a Disciplinary Review Board decision issued in December 2016.¹⁹ He remains incarcerated, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the federal prison system.

1
New York Magazine. Paul Bergrin
2
FBI. Paul Bergrin Press Release
3
FBI. Attorney Turned Racketeer
4
Al Jazeera. Bush Wanted on Stand in Abuse Trial
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CNN. Abu Ghraib Plea Deal
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U.S. Department of Justice. Baskerville Press Release
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U.S. Department of Justice. Bergrin Indictment Press Release
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NBC News. Baddest Lawyer in the History of Jersey
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U.S. Department of Justice. Bergrin Superseding Indictment
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ABA Journal. Fellow Lawyer Who Took Plea Tells Jury Paul Bergrin Tried to Get to Witness
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NJ.com. Paul Bergrin Murder Trial
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CBS News. No Verdict in Murder Trial for NJ Attorney Paul Bergrin
13
Justia. United States v. Bergrin, No. 11-4300
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NJ.com. Judge Removed From Bergrin Murder Case
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GovInfo. United States v. Bergrin, Judgment
16
U.S. Department of Justice. Attorney Paul W. Bergrin Sentenced to Life in Prison
17
The New York Times. Life Sentences for Lawyer to Celebrities
18
New Jersey Law Journal. Convicted Attorney Paul Bergrin Fails in Renewed Attempt to Beat Case
19
New Jersey Courts. Bergrin, Paul W – Disbarment Record