Sunday, May 15, 2016

The table of convictions of high-ranking New York government officials from 2009 to 2016 - why no prosecutors or judges are in it?

On May 12, 2016, two days ago, The New York Times published the table of New York's 12 high-standing public officials criminally convicted for corruption and sentenced in the years of 2009 to 2016.


I wonder why New York Times inadvertenly omitted two recent convictions, 


  1. of New York Senator and former Chairman of Committee for the Judiciary (approving judges to the New York State top court, the Court of Appeals) John Sampson convicted in July of 2015 and who is not yet sentenced, but is facing up to 20 years behind bars; and 
2.  New York Senator Thomas Libous who was convicted in 2015 and sentenced to a 60-month "house arrest" and $50,000 fine - because he had cancer, which does not usually prevent "defendants from the street", not state Senators, from going to prison.  

I, as a defense attorney, personally handled cases in New York criminal courts where I had to argue that a diabetic, a person on kidney dialysis (for years), a person who just underwent a quadruple bypass, a person who is legally blind - those people are better left outside than sent to prison, sometimes successfully, many times unsuccessfully.  

Judges often claimed that there is medical care in prison, so there is no reason not to sent there people with disabilities, even disabilities requiring ICU-type care.

In a case I did not represent, but where a lawsuit against the judge was filed by a pro se defendant, the criminal defendant claimed that the now-former Judge Carl F. Becker told him (and I checked the court records, the account was correct) that he allegedly invented his back pain to undergo SURGERY in order to forego sentencing, and that they have good medical care for him in prison, so he should be sanctioned for not appearing at sentencing because he was undergoing a back surgery.


So, courts are lenient to disabled individuals with medical problems only when such disabled individuals are former Senators.



Thomas Libous recently died, and his published obituary in the local press in Binghamton, NY, was named "A Towering Legacy".

Towering, indeed.

To die while being under a house arrest as a convicted felon.

But - you know what is conspicuously absent in the list of these convictions?

Prosecutors and judges.

Does Preet Bharara avoid prosecuting judges because they regulate his own law license, and does he avoid prosecuting corrupt prosecutors because the majority of judges regulating Bharara's law license are former prosecutors?

In a state where corruption in courts runs rampant, and wrongful convictions are a problem for decades, to prosecute only legislative and city officials for actions not concerning court corruption appears just - too cautious to me for the allegedly independent prosecutor Preet Bharara.

Don't you think?




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