PROVIDENCE -- Just over a year ago state prosecutors, in an highly unusual move, seized defense lawyer Donna Uhlmann's BlackBerry at the courthouse as she met with a judge.
Two months later, a grand jury indicted Uhlmann and Gerard Donley, another defense lawyer, on charges that they and one of Donley's clients had bribed and conspired to bribe a witness.
The attorney general's office kept mum.
That changed Feb. 8, when the state laid out its case against Uhlmann and Donley at a plea-agreement hearing for another alleged accomplice, convicted felon Michael Drepaul. By the state's telling, Donley, in collusion with Uhlmann, arranged payments of at least $6,000 to Drepaul's girlfriend in exchange for his lying to a grand jury about who stabbed him at a murdered friend's wake.
Donley and Uhlmann deny the charges.