The Court Report
By Richard Blassberg

Judge Adler Carefully Balances Justice Interests
State Supreme Court, White Plains
Judge Lester B. Adler Presiding

Monday, October 16th former high school science teacher Paul Wicht appeared before Supreme Court Justice Les Adler for sentencing, having been found guilty, nearly a year ago, by a jury, of three counts of 110.235.22-00, Attempted Dissemination of Indecent Materials To A Minor, a Class E Felony.

Number 96 in a long chain of 111 of Jeanine Pirro’s so-called Internet Sting cases, prosecuted between July 1999 and December 2005, Wicht’s case is, in fact, distinguishable from all of the other prosecutions in that the initial e-mail correspondence was not initiated by the Defendant, but rather by a 15-year-old female, former student, apparently seeking adult attention and advice.

Seeing her former teacher, who had transferred to another high school, at an athletic competition with her school, she had passed a note to Wicht through a friend asking him to contact her. The student informed her former, very popular science teacher, that she was involved in an intimate relationship with an older boy, and that she couldn’t communicate with her parents about it.

In short, unlike every one of Pirro’s other sting targets, Paul Wicht had not been surfing the Internet seeking inappropriate sexual contacts, but rather, was picked out by his “victim,” who desired to re-establish communication with a former, very popular, teacher, quite possibly to prove to her peers that she could. Quite simply, Paul Wicht demonstrated no predisposition to engage in unlawful activities with minors, sexual, or otherwise. He was not seeking any, let alone any unlawful, contact with minors, when his former student, for whatever reason, pursued him.

Unfortunately, the report that appeared in The Journal News on Tuesday, October 17th, was flawed in several aspects. To begin with, Paul Wicht never exchanged sexually explicit e-mails with the actual student, however ill-advised and overreaching his expressions of affection might have been. After all, had there been any criminality in Wicht’s correspondences to that young woman, he would not have been charged with Attempted Dissemination, but rather with Dissemination of Indecent Materials To A Minor.

Inappropriate, wrong-minded, certainly, however innocent and beneficial the series of correspondences to his former student might have started out, in response to her request for contact, it did not constitute a crime. Specifically, Wicht’s e-mail exchange with the actual youngster could not be prosecuted as a crime under any statute. Furthermore, under the recent Kozlow Decision, even his correspondence with North Castle Police, and Westchester District Attorney surrogate correspondents, skillfully inducing and entrapping as it may have been, did not provide sufficient evidence of crime, as there was no transmission of indecent graphic images.

Judge Adler, mindful of Kozlow, having denied a three-pronged Defense appeal, on procedural grounds, which included a serious allegation of prosecutorial misconduct, a Brady violation, the type of which former DA Pirro
is becoming known for, several days earlier, came to his sentencing duties determined to discharge his mandated responsibilities, but equally determined to be fair, if firm, and realistic, with regard to the probable outcome of the
Defendant’s appellate motions, once placed before the appropriate tribunal.

And, while the Judge felt compelled to stiffly reprimand Wicht for his obvious poor judgment, and failure to respect his custodial responsibilities as a teacher, Adler was, at the same moment, thoughtful, and very careful to avoid the premature execution of punishment upon a Defendant whose indictment and conviction may well be overturned.

The Journal News erroneously reported that Wicht “saw the girl” when she visited Bronxville High School for a softball game. Actually, she had passed a note to the Defendant, her former teacher, through a schoolmate. Clearly, what started innocently enough, on the part of the Defendant, and was terminated by him, after several e-mails were exchanged over a two week period, would never have gone any further had it not been for the intervention of, and restarting of the “correspondence” by the North Castle Police, followed by Jeannine Pirro’s operatives, a fact omitted from the daily newspaper’s report.

Analysis

Irrespective of the Kozlow Decision and its certain favorable impact upon Paul Wicht’s present appeal, had the police and Mrs. Pirro’s Office not been maliciously motivated to create a crime where there was none, to induce and entrap, and then withhold Brady Material from the jury, the Court, and the Defense, intentionally failing to produce the most exculpating of the e-mails forwarded by the Defendant, and, had Mrs. Pirro not decided to engage in extreme tactics for self-promotional purposes, this defendant would never have been arrested.

It was nauseating to witness the interaction between Assistant DA Michael Delohery, the now seventeen-year-old “victim,” and her parents. In point of fact, given that Wicht, even under “Pirro-Law,” had not broken the law in his original e-mail exchanges, and had terminated the correspondence, there was no legitimate reason for the Prosecution’s elaborately choreographed use and manipulation of the girl involved. As regards her statement to the Court, applied for by the Prosecution, truth be told, it was not the Defendant who “robbed her youth” as she complained to Adler, but rather the DA’s Office which used her and exposed her unnecessarily, both at
trial, and at sentencing.

The words “He killed my age of innocence,” coming from the mouth of this youngster who had spoken of her intimate relationship with an older boy, two years earlier, at age 15, was as contrived as her other utterance, “I
was five feet tall, and I weighed ninety-five pounds.” These words were not her own, and were specifically inserted by the DA’s Office to shift attention from their prosecutorial misconduct. Only time will tell what impact this child’s unnecessary involvement in the malicious, and unlawful activities of the North Castle Police Department, and the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office will ultimately have upon her life.