OGDEN -- Defense attorney Geoffrey Clark has been bound over for trial on charges that he coached three clients to lie on the stand.
After a two-day preliminary hearing, Senior District Judge Ronald Hyde said Wednesday that the witnesses against Clark -- a serial rapist, an arsonist and a man who killed his 28-day-old daughter -- were not of "the highest quality." But neither is the standard of proof required at a preliminary hearing, the judge said.He ordered Clark to appear before 2nd District Judge Stanton Taylor for a scheduling hearing Dec. 21.
Clark could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of four second-degree felony counts of perjury and five third-degree felony counts of witness tampering.
Clark claims prosecutors have targeted him for being an aggressive defense attorney. Clark also said his former clients are unhappy because they all ended up in jail or prison.
Clark is charged with nine counts of felony witness tampering for allegedly telling clients to commit perjury in three cases.
The charges stem from Clark's self-described "aggressive" defense of serial rapist Jason Brett Higgins; Trev Poulson, an animal-rights activist who tried to set fire to a fur company; and Alejandro Miranda, who killed his 28-day-old daughter.
Higgins, serving time for raping eight women, testified Tuesday that Clark gave him tips for feigning mental illness so he could end up in the state mental hospital instead of prison.
"We discussed fidgets and twitches and things I would say in order to look mentally ill," Higgins said. "One thing he suggested, that I thought was absurd, was to claim that I was the biblical figure Job. Another, which I never actually did, was a suggestion that I roll around and scream that I was on fire."
Clark is also accused of telling Alejandro Miranda, who has pleaded guilty to shaking his infant daughter to death, and his wife to give false testimony that he asked police to provide him a lawyer and they refused. Their statement was designed to suppress his confession, which failed.
Prosecutors said members of Miranda's family secretly taped Clark admitting to coaching the two, but the tape recording was so poor, Clark can only be heard apparently failing to deny it.
Trev Poulson, convicted of a second-degree felony of attempted aggravated arson, testified that Clark told him to find an alibi witness for the night of March 19, 1997, when he and two accomplices poured gasoline all over the grounds of a West Haven fur company. They fled without igniting the gas when they saw a security guard.
Poulson recruited a childhood friend, Gretta Schen, of Logan, to lie for him.
Both testified that Clark told them to "take the memories from one day and substitute them for the day the offense occurred."
The details included attending a concert, but both testified that Clark told them to leave that out, because police could check on the date of the show.
"He said he wanted to win this case badly against (prosecutor) Gary Heward, because if he could win against Gary, that would prove he could win against anybody," Poulson said.