Judge denies motion for recusal in Navarro, Servis case

The judge presiding over a case alleging a widespread conspiracy among trainers, veterinarians, and pharmacists to treat horses with banned substances forcefully dismissed a motion that she be recused from the case based on her past co-ownership of several mares, calling it “clearly meritless” while chastising the attorneys who filed it.

Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that the motion contained several “clear falsehoods,” including a contention that she owned horses that raced against two trainers who have been indicted, Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, in four races held from 2006 to 2009. Vyskocil said that she owned a “fractional, incidental” interest in the two mares who produced the horses.

“No reasonable person would or could believe that I cannot preside fairly and impartially over this case based on my past ownership of an incidental, fractionally negligible interest in two horses whose offspring – whose offspring which I did not own – apparently ran in four races with horse trained by defendants Servis and Navarro more than a decade ago,” Vyskocil said.

Vyskocil said the motion “was clearly calculated to divert attention from the serious crimes for which the defendants have been accused” and that press reports about the motion repeated the falsehoods contained in it.

“The motion is denied as frivolous,” she said.

The declaration came during a status conference held on Friday morning in which attorneys for the defendants and the government discussed the status of discovery and the potential scheduling of trials. In an indictment released in March of 2020, the government accused the indicted individuals of various crimes relating to distributing and administering illegal substances to both Thoroughbred and Standardbred horses. Both Navarro and Servis have entered not guilty pleas.

Andrew Adams, the lead prosecutor in the case, told Vyskocil that discovery “is largely complete,” though he also said that the prosecution does intend to submit some documents in the near future. The case has so far moved slowly due to the volume of discovery in the case because of the widespread seizure of computers and mobile devices from the defendants, as well as extensive wiretap transcripts.

Adams also said that the government does not anticipate filing any superseding indictments in the case, and if the prosecutors did so, it would not “have any impact on discovery or the facts underlying the case.”

Vyskocil set several new summer and early-fall deadlines for filing motions in the case, and she urged the government and the defendants to move toward a trial quickly.

“We’re getting to the point where we need discovery to be closed,” Vyskocil said. “We need this case to be moving toward a trial.” She told the parties on the call that she expected the first of three trial groupings to go to trial in the “fourth quarter of 2021, with the others to follow soon thereafter in 2022.”

“I’m putting everyone on notice of that right now,” she said.