An independent attorney appointed by Judge Dale Ho to advise on New York City Mayor Eric Adams‘s corruption case said in a court filing that the case should be dismissed with prejudice.
Paul Clement, Ho’s answer to a legal problem in which the prosecution against Adams went limp in its offensive, took the Department of Justice’s request to dismiss charges to the next level in his recommendation.
If Adams’s case is dismissed with prejudice, it cannot be brought again. Clement added this to his recommendation because he said the case could hang over Adams’s head like the “sword of Damocles.”
Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the DOJ official who requested Adams’s charges be dismissed, argued that the case jeopardized his ability to cooperate with the Trump administration on combating illegal immigration. He also said it came too close to the 2025 mayoral primaries.
DEMOCRATIC LEADERS FLOUNDER IN FACE OF DOJ’S ERIC ADAMS DISMISSAL REQUEST
“The executive’s unilateral option for ending a prosecution — namely, a pardon — more closely resembles a dismissal with prejudice,” Clement wrote.
“And the executive’s undoubted power to decline to initiate a prosecution leaves a citizen’s liberty untouched. But a dismissal without prejudice creates a palpable sense that the prosecution outlined in the indictment and approved by a grand jury could be renewed, a prospect that hangs like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the accused,” he added.
