Samirkumar J. Shah v. United States
AdministrativeLaw DueProcess JusticiabilityDoctri
Whether the Petitioner was afforded a meaningful and fair adversarial process when the district court denied his motion to disqualify the United States Attorney's Office without an evidentiary hearing
QUESTIONS PRESENTED ~ ‘ The situation in this case raises the question of whether the Petitioner, Samirkumar Shah, a practicing cardiologist whose former attorney, Tina Miller, switched sides to become a supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney while Petitioner’s . criminal proceeding was underway, was afforded a meaningful and fair adversarial process when the district court arbitrarily denied his motion to disqualify the United States Attorney’s Office that Ms. Miller supervised, and doing so without convening = an evidentiary hearing to properly assess the merits of Petitioner’s disqualification motion. : . . Looking at the situation through a logical lens while approaching the extremely : important disqualification issue with an abundance of caution due to the underlying complexity of human behavior that is involved, the circumstances leading up to Ms. Miller switching sides and becoming the supervising AUSA over the attorneys who prosecuted Petitioner warranted disqualification of the entire United States Attorneys’ , Office. The district court concluded that it did not, citing a “fully developed” record as basis for its decision—a record that is devoid of any meaningful input from the defense which sought a continuance in order to convene an evidentiary in order to develop the record. Had the district court convened an evidentiary rather than ; arbitrarily concluding that it did not “see any issue of any facts demonstrating a conflict of [interest],” (