When Jackson Mayor Frank Melton and his former bodyguard go on trial this week in federal court, they will face a seasoned Washington lawyer with a track record of aggressively prosecuting law enforcement officers accused of abuse.
Mark Blumberg is deputy chief of the criminal section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Blumberg has been a smiling, professional cipher since first appearing in July at Melton’s indictment, saying little about the case in court – and nothing out of it.
His public record, however, indicates he is on familiar ground in pursuing Melton and the mayor’s former bodyguard, Michael Recio, on civil rights charges.
Around the same time as the mayor’s indictment, Blumberg was wrapping up a successful prosecution of Patrick Syring, a former State Department foreign service officer who pleaded guilty to threatening employees of the Arab American Institute because of their race and national origin. Last year, Blumberg helped prosecute a jail administrator in New Mexico who shot a riot control gun at a naked, mentally ill inmate.
Magnolia Tribune
