United States v. Tova Noel and Michael Thomas

United States v. Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, 19 Cr. 830 (AT), was a federal criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York assigned to Judge Analisa Torres. The grand jury returned a four-count indictment on November 19, 2019 (Dkt. 1) charging both correctional officers with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 and three counts of making false records in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001. The indictment alleged that during their overnight shifts in the Metropolitan Correctional Center's Special Housing Unit on August 9–10, 2019, Noel and Thomas failed to perform mandated 30-minute rounds and the institutional counts at 12:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and 5:00 a.m., instead remaining at the officers' desk, browsing the internet, and moving around the SHU common area, while signing count slips and round forms attesting that the checks had been performed. As a result, no officer conducted any round of the 9 South tier from approximately 10:30 p.m. on August 9 until approximately 6:30 a.m. on August 10, when the defendants discovered Epstein unresponsive in his cell.

The defendants self-surrendered on November 19, 2019 and were arraigned the same day. Defendant Noel was represented by Jason Foy of Foy & Seplowitz LLC and defendant Thomas by Montell Figgins. The prosecution was led by AUSAs Rebekah Donaleski and Nicolas Roos. Initial conferences were held before Judge Torres on November 25, 2019 (Dkt. 17, transcript) and the parties litigated discovery issues throughout 2020, including a motion to compel by Thomas seeking the DOJ Office of the Inspector General report and related BOP investigative materials (Dkt. 33), which Judge Torres denied on June 9, 2020 (Dkt. 36) on the ground that Rule 16 and Brady do not generally reach materials in the possession of non-prosecuting agencies. Trial was originally scheduled for June 22, 2020, adjourned to January 4, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Dkt. 34), and ultimately pushed into the fourth quarter of 2021 (Dkt. 51).

On or about May 20, 2021, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York entered into deferred-prosecution agreements with both defendants. The agreements required Noel and Thomas to admit the conduct charged in the indictment, to cooperate with the ongoing OIG investigation by providing truthful information, and to complete 100 hours of community service preferably related to the criminal-justice system, in exchange for a six-month deferral of prosecution. The deferral period expired on November 20, 2021 with both defendants in compliance, and the government filed a nolle prosequi dated December 13, 2021 (Dkt. 65, filed January 3, 2022) dismissing the indictment as to both defendants. The case is closed. The OIG continued its independent administrative investigation, which culminated in the June 2023 OIG report on the BOP's custody, care, and supervision of Epstein at MCC New York (separately briefed as OIG-23-085).

The corpus contains 345 EFTA-stamped pages and 635 emails linked to this docket, drawn primarily from the SDNY production. The sample reviewed includes the original four-count indictment (Dkt. 1, EFTA DOJ-OGR-00021908), the November 25, 2019 initial-conference transcript before Judge Torres (Dkt. 17, DOJ-OGR-00021977), Thomas's 38-page motion to compel discovery and production of the OIG and BOP investigative files (Dkt. 33, DOJ-OGR-00022024), Judge Torres's June 9, 2020 order denying that motion (Dkt. 36, EFTA00022186), the April 22, 2020 order adjourning trial to January 4, 2021 because of the COVID-19 jury-trial suspension (Dkt. 34, EFTA02845890), the April 19, 2021 order resetting trial for the fourth calendar quarter of 2021 (Dkt. 51, DOJ-OGR-00022120), and the December 13, 2021 nolle prosequi dismissing the indictment (Dkt. 65, DOJ-OGR-00022147). Also present is a January 29, 2020 letter from Foy & Seplowitz to the SDNY enumerating Rule 16 demands focused on the MCC video-surveillance system, including the documented "system failure" on or about July 29 and August 8, 2019 and the replacement of the surveillance system on or about August 12, 2019 (EFTA00075609).

The corpus also captures the parallel administrative track. Multiple DOJ OIG digitally recorded sworn statements taken on June 14 and July 12, 2021 in OIG Case 2019-010614 (EFTA00058522, EFTA00062649, EFTA00110989, EFTA00114184) and an OIG Memorandum of Investigation summarizing the September 12, 2019 voluntary interview of an MCC SHU Senior Officer Specialist (EFTA00135547) document the investigative record that the AUSA team and the OIG were building in parallel. A January 10, 2022 OIG memorandum to the BOP Office of Internal Affairs transmits the post-prosecution Memoranda of Investigation for both Thomas and Noel (each dated October 8, 2021) for administrative use now that the criminal case had been dismissed (EFTA00141680). The June 2023 OIG report itself is included as EFTA00039025.

Internal SDNY communications in the sample show how the disposition was managed: a May 20, 2021 "Urgent Memo Report" up-the-chain to Main Justice describing the planned DPAs, the admission-of-guilt requirement, and the 100-hour community-service term (EFTA00029185), and a June 29, 2021 SDNY notice of a planned July 2, 2021 release of approximately 2,700 pages of BOP records to The New York Times in connection with the Times's parallel FOIA suit, NYT v. BOP, 20-cv-00833 (PAE), now that the DPAs had removed the FOIA Exemption 7(A) basis for withholding (EFTA00068566; the Times's cross-motion for summary judgment in that suit is at EFTA00088701). The corpus does not include the deferred-prosecution agreements themselves, the underlying surveillance video, or the sealed grand-jury record.