Lawyer wants client to get job back
Thursday, March 22, 2007 1:03 PM PDT
SALEM (AP) — The lawyer representing former Oregon prison food purchasing manager Fred Monem said his client should get his job back because his firing was based on ‘‘hearsay’’ information.
In a March 8 letter to Oregon Corrections Director Max Williams, lawyer David Angeli wrote that the state violated Monem’s constitutional rights by depriving him of due process and firing him based on ‘‘hearsay’’ confidential-witness information reported in a federal search warrant affidavit. Angeli called for his client to be reinstated pending the outcome of a federal criminal investigation.
Monem, 48, and his wife, Karen, 43, who live in Salem, are accused of accepting at least $675,000 in kickbacks and bribes from three food companies.
Neither one has been charged with a crime, but investigators have alleged that Monem steered prison system food business to vendors in California, Maryland and New York, in exchange for cash payments.
Before his Feb. 26 firing, Monem had built a reputation as a ‘‘whiz kid’’ who had saved the state Department of Corrections millions of dollars in inmate food costs by purchasing food nearing its expiration date and also through buying in bulk.
Angeli’s criticisms of the firing were outlined in letters to Williams and a deputy state attorney general.
‘‘In addition to causing financial hardship to Mr. Monem and his family, the DOC’s action was reported in newspaper headlines and radio and television broadcasts across the state, permanently damaging Mr. Monem’s reputation,’’ Angeli wrote in a March 16 letter to Stephan Brady, a state assistant attorney general.
The Statesman Journal newspaper obtained the letters Tuesday.
They were released by the Oregon Attorney General’s Office in response to a public records request filed by the newspaper.
State lawyers and corrections officials declined to comment on Angeli’s bid to have Monem reinstated to his $75,000-a-year job.
By law, Williams doesn’t have to provide Monem or his lawyer with any official response to the appeal, said Stephanie Soden, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Attorney General’s Office.
