Delaware Chief Judge Uses Prosecutor’s Edge in IP Funding Probes

Colm Connolly stood among mountains of garbage, watching through the August rain as an excavator combed the rotting trash for clues.

The young federal prosecutor had a murder to solve.

Connolly suspected that somewhere in the refuse heaped in a Wilmington, Delaware, landfill, he might find enough evidence to arrest and convict Thomas Capano, a prominent lawyer, for killing his mistress. Anne Marie Fahey, the governor’s scheduling secretary, had disappeared without a trace, in a mystery that gripped Delaware.

Connolly, then an assistant US attorney a few months shy of his 32nd birthday, dug through soggy bags of trash, using ...