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Monday, January 2, 2017

ROY BRADLEY ORDERED TO APPEAR: January 11, 2017 Status Conference Set

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
William Shakespeare

“Roy Bradley, to me, is a noble person, who did great things for Bay City and did it well,” Steven Ingersoll said at his December 15, 2016 sentencing hearing.

Bradley has been ordered by United States District Court Judge Thomas L. Ludington to appear January 11 at 4:00pm for a status conference in his tax fraud case. 

You might ask why Bradley was not sentenced along with co-defendant Steven Ingersoll on December 15, 2016, and here's why: on April 1, 2016, Bradley's attorney filed a motion for a new trial in his asbestos mishandling case based on ineffective assistance of counsel, a matter that remains unresolved.

Here's an excerpt from that filing:

Petitioner Roy Bradley had a rather simple defense to charges brought against him for improperly removing asbestos; there was no asbestos to be improperly removed because he had hired an asbestos abatement company, A-Plus, to do it properly five months earlier. 

Mr. Bradley spent countless hours investigating and preparing his defense. He had witnesses ready to testify on his behalf and documents to bolster their testimony. 

Yet all his attempts to educate his court-appointed lawyer, Elias Escobedo failed. Mr. Escobedo refused to learn the basic facts of the case, failed to investigate potential witnesses who would have exonerated Roy Bradley, failed to adequately cross-examine government’s witnesses, and failed to put on any defense after promising the jury that he would prove that A-Plus abated the asbestos. 

His conduct clearly “fell below an objective standard of reasonableness” and “there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”

Bradley was convicted in the asbestos case on December 2, 2014, and was sentenced to 60 months on March 12, 2015. He filed his motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. §2255 with the assistance of his retained counsel on April 1, 2016—April Fools’ Day.

Mark Satawa, an attorney who represented Bradley during the tax fraud trial, replaced former attorney Elias Escobedo. Bradley, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate and did not take the stand in his own defense during the asbestos trial, asserted that three unidentified “friends/family” stepped forward, giving him the money necessary to hire the Southfield-based Satawa.

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