Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

Justice has been mocked in the felony trial against Dennis Stackhouse. The fast-talking developer from Boston who charmed the Miami-Dade County Commission into paying him to build a biotech park in Liberty City pleaded guilty to five third-degree felonies this week for bundling campaign contributions. Because he has no prior criminal record, the charges won’t bring any prison time.

A clean record?

That’s bad enough, but what Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas considered adequate punishment is an insult to justice. Judge Thomas sentenced Mr. Stackhouse to 12 months’ probation and a measly 15 hours of community service. Then Judge Thomas said he would withhold a finding of guilt, meaning Mr. Stackhouse will not have a criminal record.

This is wrong on many levels, not the least of which is that Mr. Stackhouse can now go with a clean record to the next victim. At least the state attorney’s office has an ongoing criminal investigation of Mr. Stackhouse for alleged double billings and using fake invoices to skim some $500,000 in taxpayer money from the biotech project, which was never built. The county ditched the failed project after a Miami Herald investigation revealed Mr. Stackhouse’s shady business practices.

If county officials had checked Mr. Stackhouse’s record as a developer, this shameful example of yet another failure to revitalize Liberty City might have been avoided. Mr. Stackhouse claimed to be a successful developer in Boston, but the opposite was true. His companies have a history of financial problems. One company had a bankruptcy in the 1990s that lasted three years and involved more than $20 million in defaulted loans and debts. The loans were for renovating a Boston office building that Mr. Stackhouse bought in 1983. Six years later, no work had been done, but the bills were coming due.

Saved by bankruptcy

As his lenders moved to foreclose, Mr. Stackhouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Not long after, he told the bankruptcy judge that there was a buyer for the building. But where he had once valued the building at $23 million, he sold it for $6 million. Under bankruptcy laws this left him paying off lenders at about 30 cents on the dollar. Despite this, Mr. Stackhouse managed to sell the cut-rate building to a company owned in part by his wife. This is one of many deals that ended with Mr. Stackhouse deep in debt.

This history should be more than enough to persuade anyone that this man’s record should not be wiped clean. A public record of conviction would serve as a warning to others to look further into Mr. Stackhouse’s background before doing business with him.