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Judge's lawyers say paper fake

Hillsborough Circuit Court Judge Gregory Holder is accused of plagiarizing a research paper he wrote in 1998 for a seminar at the MacDill Air Force Base.

By JENNIFER LIBERTO
Published June 9, 2005

TAMPA - Missing, zig-zagging staples and a wrong date were cited Wednesday as reasons to doubt the authenticity of a research paper being used to attack the integrity of Hillsborough Circuit Court Judge Gregory Holder.

Holder's defense team began presenting its case Wednesday before the Judicial Qualifications Committee, which is considering whether Holder plagiarized a 1998 research report written for a seminar at MacDill Air Force Base.

Holder has since retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve but had completed a research paper to further his rank.

Now attorneys are arguing about two copies of a research paper, which have since surfaced, while the original has disappeared. The copies show that 10 pages of Holder's 21 page report were copied verbatim from a report written by a Pentagon employee.

Holder and his attorneys say these copies are not the report Holder submitted to U.S. Air Force officials at Air War College. The defense says the research papers presented at the JQC hearing were fabricated, in a plot to retaliate against the judge for his part in a pending federal corruption investigation at the Tampa courthouse.

Holder, 51, could lose his job if the panel finds the plagiarism charges are clear and convincing during the hearing. The deliberations are expected to continue through next week.

Holder's attorneys started building their case Wednesday that Holder did not author the research paper copies in question. Their strongest witnesses included a forensic analyst who specializes in documents and said the papers were forged. Also a Tampa Police Department employee said that Holder could be a target for retaliation.

Detective James Bartoszak had been working with the FBI investigating corruption at the courthouse and said he worked with Judge Holder, who had been a secret informant in the investigation.

Holder had been given a secret mobile phone for contacting law enforcement to avoid tipping anyone off about his cooperation, Bartoszak said.

Later, Bruce Dekraker, a documents analyst with Green and Associates of Tampa, said that the two copies in question had clearly been assembled, which he determined by analyzing different numbers of staple holes in different pages. Some had up to nine holes, some had four and one had none. "It's consistent with forgery," Dekraker said.

The defense also presented a videotaped deposition given by Tampa attorney John Vento who said he had read an original copy of Holder's ungraded research paper back in 1998, because Holder had sent him a copy to read over. Vento, also an Air Force veteran, had earlier completed a research paper for the same Air War College course and had coached Holder how to approach the research paper.

Vento gave examples of how the research paper in question contained many typographical and factual errors, such as the wrong date for the Battle of Britain in World War II, something Holder would have known.

The commission makes recommendations to the Florida Supreme Court about whether a judge should be privately or publicly reprimanded, suspended or even removed from office.

[Last modified June 9, 2005, 01:16:07]