2 Judges Guilty in Florida Corruption Inquiry
MIAMI, April 27— Two Dade County judges involved in the nation's second largest judicial corruption investigation were convicted on Monday of selling favors from the bench. Jurors found two other judges not guilty or were undecided on the charges.
Judge Harvey Shenberg, 49, was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy and one count of extortion. David Goodhart, 63, a former judge, was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy.
Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Judge Jose Gonzalez of Federal District Court set sentencing for July 1. Appeals Are Planned
Lawyers for the two judges said they would appeal.
Judge Phillip Davis was acquitted on all five charges he faced, and former Judge Alfonso C. Sepe was acquitted on 27 counts, and the jury deadlocked on five others counts against him.
The Government's indictment accused the four judges of accepting a total of $266,000 in exchange for acts like lowering bail, disclosing the existence of arrest warrants, returning seized property and suppressing evidence.
An assistant United States attorney, John O'Sullivan, said prosecutors were prepared to go to trial on the undecided counts.
Judge Sepe said he was confident that he would be found not guilty on the undecided counts and looked forward to returning to the bench. "The judiciary is very vibrant and strong and healthy, and will not come apart because there has been an unfair or untrue accusation against us," Judge Sepe said.
Judge Davis said: "This has been a trying situation for two years now, and I can only say without a shadow of a doubt that the system does work. Everyone involved in the system did their job."
Defense lawyers had focused for the most part on the Government's principal witnesses, Raymond J. Takiff, a criminal defense lawyer, and former Judge Roy T. Gelber, who earlier pleaded guilty in the case and agreed to resign from the bench and to cooperate with investigators. Origin of Inquiry
The inquiry began in 1989, when Federal agents persuaded Mr. Takiff, whose clients at the time included Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the deposed leader of Panama, to pose as the representative of a Central American drug ring and other narcotics traffickers with cases pending in Dade County. Undercover Federal and state agents then appeared in court as defendants in fictitious cases.
The Government maintained that the four judges had accepted payments from Mr. Takiff to help his clients.
The investigation was the second-largest judicial corruption investigation in American history. The largest was Chicago's investigation of municipal courts in the early 1980's, in which 67 officials pleaded guilty and 15 judges were convicted.
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