Westchester Guardian/In Our Opinion/Our Readers Respond/Janet Difiore/Jeanine Pirro.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

In Our Opinion...

“Dealing With The Devil”

For 12 years Jeanine Pirro was the ultimate authority, the force to be reckoned with in Westchester County; the one person you didn’t want to provoke no matter your guilt or innocence. In point of fact, between January 1, 1994, and December 31, 2005, there was no such thing as “self-defense” and no “accidental killings” in Westchester County. And, nobody, once made a target by Pirro’s office, was ever “discovered to be innocent.” There were only prosecutions of opportunity; a district attorney’s office whose prime requisite was the political advancement and self-preservation of DA Jeanine Pirro.

Her predecessor, Carl Vergari, had ruled with a strong grip for 26 years, having followed Leonard Rubenfeld, who preferred to be a judge, in 1968. Innocent people did go to prison under Vergari. But, he was not the self-serving, psychopathic liar who would follow him. Neither was he married to the most outrageous white collar criminal in the County. Jeanine Pirro quite literally would invent a lie at any moment, one that was calculated to advance her political position, while, at the same time, distracting public attention from hers, and her husband Al’s, criminal conduct and unethical behavior. Despite their corruptive influence, they were known as the “Power Couple”, literally adored by superficial followers,
and an icon-generating, gossipy press; Cindy Adams, Phil Reisman, Janine Rose, et cetera, ad nauseum. She was clearly not a public servant, rather a celebrity whose career and personal capital were built on the practice of extreme prosecutorial misconduct, the confabulation of “facts”, and the constant withholding of exculpatory evidence, not to mention tampering with evidence and suborning of perjury.

For Mrs. Pirro, it was never about a quest for justice, for truth, but, rather, whatever it took to achieve a conviction, even when innocence was obvious and well-established. Unfortunately, her lies and her cruelty, her evil prostitution of justice, resulted in untold numbers of innocent, incarcerated victims, persons such as Police Officer Richard Diguglielmo, civilian Anthony DiSimone, each only recently exonerated, each having served many years in state prison. They continue to be repeatedly threatened with re-prosecution by an equally evil and untruthful successor to Pirro: Janet DiFiore, who knowingly and willfully concealed from DiSimone’s attorneys 376 pages, 52 boxes and miles of exculpatory taped conversation, while sending her Assistant DAs into Federal District Court and Federal Appeals Court to repeatedly lie in the faces of those judges.

Janet DiFiore obviously had no problem with Jeanine Pirro’s mode of operation, having served six years under her. In fact, in 2005, when Pirro, responding to her own polling that informed her she would not win if she ran against Tony Castro for a second time, decided not to seek a fourth term. DiFiore, running for the job, told The Journal News editorial staff interviewing her, that she would give Pirro a grade of A-plus. Given her Pirro-like repeated prosecutorial misconduct, and totally misguided actions to cover up and preserve years of wrongful convictions, We believe she meant it.

Most significantly, Janet DiFiore has dealt with the County’s 43 individual police departments in the same manipulative and political ways Pirro often did, and, in many ways, worse. Her relationship with the Yonkers Police Department, in particular, can best be described as incestuous
and twisted. There can be little doubt, in light of her handling of the Irma Marquez case, and the Rui Florim case, and numerous other less-publicized cases of Yonkers police brutality, including Tina and Mary Bostwick, and Dr. Sherry Bobrowsky, that she is unnaturally tied to,
and beholden to, that department, a fact that goes right to her installation as District Attorney.

However, her wrongful handling of police departments, and individual police officers, has not been limited to Yonkers. Much as her predecessor, she repeatedly uses the power of her office to engage police departments in deals with the devil. Consider her dealings with the Bedford and Mount Kisco Police Departments last year regarding the death of Rene Perez.

As The Guardian observed, she came to court against Mount Kisco Police Officer George Bubaris, with her “tank on empty.” Consider, too, her secretive and disrespectful handling of the shooting death of heroic Mount Vernon Police Officer Christopher Ridley. How different were her dealings with the County Police, the White Plains Police, and Mount Vernon Police Departments, all involved in Officer Ridley’s case; her manipulation and coercion. How different was DiFiore’s conduct as compared with Jeanine Pirro’s manipulation of the Dobbs Ferry Police Department in Police Officer Richard Diguglielmo’s case, in Steven Nowicki’s case, and numerous other cases. Deals with the devil, each and every one.

Our Readers Respond....

On The Eve Of A New Day: In Honor of the American People for the election of President, Barack Obama November 4, 2008.

I looked out onto the eve of morning, with its new day rising for America and behold I saw the image of our President Elect Barack Obama as the peoples’ declaration that America will now strive together as a nation to honor and live up to the Constitution, the Amendments and The Declaration of Independence of these United States!

From a nation constructed from slave labor, I heard the messages from the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware and the District of Columbia that all men are indeed created equal!

From a nation marred with the blood of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Riders and the Foot Soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, I heard the voices of the states of Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and New Mexico proclaimed that we are indeed a United States!

From a nation still haunted by the images of the thousand nameless faces of black men and boys and families hanging from the limbs of southern trees, I heard the calls from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota, that we have overcome and this is the day the Lord has made for the Promised Land!

In a nation once plagued by segregation, I witnessed the coming together of people: in pairs, one-by-one, in groups of a dozen, in clusters of colorful droves: in peaceful assembly for the good and the survival of our nation!

From a nation where two hundred and twenty-one years ago, the founding fathers documented in the United States Constitution that slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a human being, I heard the resounding echo from the southern states of Virginia, Florida and North Carolina, that this time of judgment is based on knowledge, character and capability!

In a nation still riddled with racial prejudice, hatred and fear, I saw the writings on the wall from the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington and Hawaii that read, this man Obama, is the only qualified applicant for the post of Commander in Chief!

And then he spoke accepting his calling and I heard him proclaimed in a brilliant, righteous, commanding fashion “This Is Your Victory.” Then it all made sense, this is the victory of Rosa Parks, of Dr. King, of the Freedom Riders, and the Foot Soldiers, of John F. Kennedy of Robert Kennedy – it is the victory of the countless every day people who sacrificed their lives for justice and equality – it is the victory of every American today!
Congratulations America, we’ll teach the world to fly again!

Joan Wong
New Rochelle

Helping EMS Save Lives Is the Responsibility of Every Business

Dear Editor:

Every day, nearly 1000 Americans suffer sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). Chances for the victim’s survival decrease by 10% every 60 seconds after the attack. If the attack happens in your store or your office, you are the victim’s best chance for survival. It doesn’t require a healthcare professional. You can help save this person’s life, with the establishment of an early defibrillation program.. Finding out how to incorporate an early defibrillation program into your workplace is your public-health responsibility.

You’ve probably seen what SCA looks like on TV. But when it happens to someone right in front of you, whether to a loved one or a stranger, a work colleague or a customer, it is a sight you never forget. More than anything, you want to help.

Most commonly, the victim is suffering from a heart rhythm disorder called “ventricular fibrillation.” In this case, the victim needs defibrillation—which is an electrical shock to correct the heart’s rhythm—and they need it as soon as possible.

Defibrillation is delivered through a device called an automated external defibrillator, or AED. The latest AEDs are remarkably simple to use. With minimal training, anyone can be a lifesaver. The lightweight devices talk you through the rescue. They show you pictures to remind you how to
proceed. They sense whether the victim needs CPR or defibrillation, and they tell you how to deliver either. They have also become very
affordable, a recent development that makes widespread early defi-brillation a real possibility at last.

Wherever it is instituted, Public Access Defribrillation is a stunning success story. Placed in airplanes, airports, casinos, hotels, office buildings,
malls, restaurants, retail stores, and other public places, AEDs are saving lives all over the country. They are far more successful than CPR alone, increasing survival rates up to 70%. If you work in an office, a store, a mall, or a restaurant, you should have a defibrillator, and you should know how to use it. You have a fire extinguisher and smoke alarms. You have a telephone to call the police. You have a first-aid kit. You should have a
defibrillator. You owe it to your employees, your customers, and yourself to find out more.

Lenny Nathan


Reader Supports Gov. Paterson

Dear Editor:


I read your article regarding Governor Paterson’s cuts in government spending, which I am in total agreement with. You cited our nuclear facility.
Will you tell me, when was the last time that facility was attacked? You pointed out how our National Guard was protecting that facility, well maybe you don’t know, the National Guard is a civilian entity that has military training, basically to protect a certain group in our society. I know this to be true because I helped train them when I was in the Army.

They sleep on the job; the Governor can get anyone to work at Readers Respond, continued from page 4 Indian Point, make a few rounds and then go to sleep. There are approximately 95 or so personnel up there, and the cost is approximately $6,500,000 per year, which comes to about $75,000 per person. Only the commanding general should be paid that kind of money.

If the Governor sees fit to make any cuts he so chooses, you, like me, should give him our full support without question, because he has thought it over very carefully. He is not like your usual politician; he would not do anything without thinking it through first. I have lived under a lot of different Governors since Augustus Caesar, and they all was as crooked as an ess, without foresight or insight, and they made all kinds of
mistakes on top of greed and theft of public funds. Now we have a genuine down-to-earth individual, let us give him all the support we can.

Eddie Sauls, Sr.
Mount Vernon

Westchester Guardian/The Court Report/Janet Difiore/Richard Diguglielmo/Jeanine Pirro.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Court Report
By Richard Blassberg

Appellate Division Of State Supreme
Court Refuses To Stay the Order
By Judge Rory J. Bellantoni Freeing
Richard DiGuglielmo.

Analysis:

The decision last Thursday, October 8th, by a four-judge panel of the Appellate
Division of State Supreme Court, Second Department, to deny the motion
by Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore, calling for a “stay of enforcement”
of the Decision and Order last month by Judge Rory J. Bellantoni in the
case of Richard D. DiGuglielmo, is a very encouraging sign that that Court has
begun to recognize the true nature of numerous prosecutions, for 12 years, under
former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, as well as the repeated, misguided effort
of DA Janet DiFiore to preserve the wrongful convictions so often produced.

Attorney Andrew Shapiro, of Mayer, Brown, who has been engaged ‘pro bono’ for nine years in the effort to overturn DiGuglielmo’s wrongful conviction, told The Guardian, “We are very pleased.”

Dr. Bobrowsky To Re-Occupy Her Home
Yonkers City Court
Judge Michael A. Martinelli, Presiding

When The Guardian last reported about Dr. Sherry Bobrowsky, who had been rendered virtually homeless by the connivances and co-conspiracy of her brother, Jacques, and his attorney, Herbert N. Posner, together with the
Yonkers Police Department, as well as Yonkers Corporate Counsel, and the Westchester DA’s Office, we closed with the optimistic prediction, based upon Judge Martinelli’s having consolidated, and taken over, all of her cases, that she might “soon re-occupy her home and normalize her life.” As the result of the non-jury trial before Martinelli on September 25th and the proceedings last Wednesday, October 8th, it appears that prediction will become reality within a week.

Bobrowsky appeared before Judge Martinelli in the company of her attorney, Anthony John Messina, of White Plains, to receive the Judge’s verdict with respect to the trial in which she had been charged with violating an Order of Protection barring her from contact
with her 82-year-old mother, Lillian.

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Lowry was present at the Prosecution table. And, seated in the spectators’ section, were Lillian, Jacques, and attorney Posner.

Judge Martinelli opened the proceedings stating, “The People’s case consisted of a statement that Ms. Bobrowsky was parked at the curb and that she left when her mother appeared.

The People failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. The case is dismissed.”
Having found Dr. Bobrowsky innocent, Martinelli next proceeded to deal with an Order To Show Cause filed by attorney Posner.

Martinelli declared, “I’m looking at the meritorious defense. It’s excusable default I’m mostly concerned with.”

Attorney Posner then stated, “There was an Order To Show Cause, which is before Judge Liebowitz. I don’t know when Judge Liebowitz will decide the motion.”

Attorney Messina, possibly sensing yet another delay, responded, “I would assume Judge Liebowitz would’ve given me an opportunity to respond to any stay which I am totally unaware of,” seeming to cast doubt upon the very existence of such an Order.

At that point, Attorney Posner claimed that Judge Liebowitz had relied upon him to convey the information regarding the motion to Messina.

Messina then proceeded to deny all of Posner’s assertions, declaring, “Judge, if he went to Supreme Court and the Judge didn’t sign...”

As Messina continued to address the Court, casting further doubt upon Posner’s assertions, Posner reached into his briefcase and handed up to the Judge a copy of an Order To Show Cause supposedly signed by Judge Liebowitz.

Posner then said, “If we were in a situation in which there was no question of equities...,” picking up on a prior statement by Martinelli with reference to 82-year-old Lillian. He then abruptly declared, “They will be out of the house before the 23rd of October.”

At that point, Attorney Messina stated, “I understand the equities. But, my client has an equity claim too. It is her house.”

Judge Martinelli then began, “We were here on September 11th, and that was the first; and then September 23rd.”

Posner responded, “All I’m asking is to give my client until the 23rd. I assure you that they will be out on, or before, the 23rd.”

Martinelli responded, “I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

At that point, Mr. Messina offered, “Your Honor, my client insists on addressing the Court.” However, Dr. Bobrowsky failed to speak, and Judge Martinelli declard, “I’ve made my determination,” thus closing the proceedings.



Top Executives Of Pharmacy Chain,
With Eight Stores In Westchester, Indicted
Former CEO And CFO Of Duane Reade Charged With Securities Fraud

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and MARK J. MERSHON, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced that ANTHONY CUTI, the former Chief Executive Of- ficer (“CEO”), Chairman of the Board, and President of Duane Reade, Inc. (“Duane Reade”), and WILLIAM TENNANT, the former Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”) and Senior Vice-President of Duane Reade, were indicted for allegedly perpetrating a scheme to falsely inflate the income and reduce the expenses that Duane Reade reported to the investing public and others.

CUTI was also charged with making false filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). According to the Indictment filed in Manhattan federal court: From December 2000 through June 2005, CUTI and TENNANT engaged in a scheme to misrepresent Duane Reade’s fi-
nancial performance in order to meet its own projections and the expectations of professional securities analysts’ expectations about the company’s financial performance.

The scheme involved: 1) the reporting of inflated income from fraudulent real estate transactions; and 2) the artificial reduction of expenses through fictitious credits from vendors who did work for Duane Reade. Real Estate Transactions: With respect to the real estate transactions, CUTI and TENNANT engaged in fraudulent “Real Estate Concession Transactions.” Pursuant to these transactions, Duane Reade sold to various brokers, real estate developers, and landlords certain real estate rights, including remaining time on leases and options on retail locations. The rights being sold, however, were largely worthless for various reasons, including that there was little or no time left on the leases, the property subject to the transactions was unusable, or Duane Reade had already sold the right previously. In order to convince various third parties,
brokers, developers and landlords, to participate in these fraudulent transactions, CUTI promised, through various side agreements, to pay the third parties back the cost of doing the transactions.

TENNANT and CUTI carried out these promises by engaging in additional fraudulent transactions that were merely vehicles to return money to the third parties. In order to inflate reported income, CUTI and TENNANT generally structured the fraudulent Real Estate Concession
Transactions so that Duane Reade could report income on them immediately in the financial quarter in which Duane Reade faced a shortfall
on its own projections or analysts’ expectations.

Meanwhile, CUTI and TENNANT structured the fraudulent return payments to the third parties so they would be treated as capital expenditures, enabling Duane Reade to stretch those costs over a long period of time.

CUTI and TENNANT misled Duane Reade’s auditors about the Real Estate Concession Transactions by failing to disclose that the real estate rights being sold were largely worthless and by failing to inform the auditors that they were reimbursing the brokers, developers, and landlords for participating in the deals.

Fictitious Credits: CUTI also falsely inflated the income that Duane Reade reported to the investing public in a second way, by engaging in fraudulent “Credit-Rebilling Transactions.” In these transactions, CUTI directed a co-conspirator not named in the Indictment (“CC-1”), who was an employee of Duane Reade, to seek fictitious credits from vendors who did work for Duane Reade. At the same time, CUTI directed CC-1 to tell the vendors that they could recover the money from the fictitious credits by rebilling Duane Reade for the same amounts in later quarters without doing any additional work. CUTI further told CC-1 that the vendors should use language on the false rebilling that would allow Duane Reade to treat the rebilling as capital expenditures. In this way, Duane Reade could record the credits immediately but stretch the cost of the rebilling over time.

These credits and rebilling were false because, as CUTI knew, they did not reflect the true reasons for the credits and the side agreements Duane Reade had struck with the vendors. The false credits were used to decrease Duane Reade’s expenses, which had the effect of increasing the net income reported to the public.

As a result of both aspects of the scheme, materially false and misleading information was provided to the investing public, Duane Reade shareholders and auditors, and the SEC about the company’s true income, expenses, earnings per share, and other financial results. This information was contained in Annual and Quarterly Reports filed with the SEC, in press releases, and on conference calls held with securities analysts. In addition, in July 2004, the private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P. (“Oak Hill”), purchased all the publicly traded stock of Duane Reade.

Materially false and misleading information was provided to Oak Hill during the negotiation of this purchase. CUTI participated directly in those negotiations. Through this scheme, CUTI and TENNANT caused Duane Reade to report income that was inflated in a false and misleading
manner by approximately 10-15 percent between the last quarter of its fiscal year in 2000 and Oak Hill’s acquisition in July 2004.

CUTI and TENNANT achieved significant financial gain in part pursuant to this scheme. CUTI negotiated lucrative compensation packages with Duane Reade and Oak Hill. From 2000 through 2005, CUTI received more than $50 million in compensation from Duane Reade and Oak
Hill, including a pay-out of more than $25 million in connection with Oak Hill’s acquisition. TENNANT, from June through November 2001, after participating in numerous fraudulent Real Estate Concession Transactions, exercised his options to buy Duane Reade stock and received in excess of $2.8 million in gain.

The case is assigned to United States District Judge DEBORAH A. BATTS. CUTI is expected to surrender and be arraigned on the charges. TENNANT is expected to surrender at a later date. The Indictment charges CUTI and TENNANT with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, make false statements in annual and quarterly SEC reports, make false statements to auditors, and make false entries in books and
records; and one count of securities fraud. It also charges CUTI with three counts of making false filings with the SEC. The conspiracy count carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss from the offense. The securities fraud count and the false SEC filing counts each carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison and fines of $5 million.

CUTI, 63, lives in Saddle River, New Jersey. TENNANT, 61, lives in Richmond, Virginia. Mr. DASSIN praised the investigative work of the FBI, and thanked the SEC for their assistance.

“The defendants are alleged to have deceived the investing public by providing false and misleading information about Duane Reade’s financial condition while lining their own pockets with millions of dollars in compensation,” said Acting United States Attorney LEV L. DASSIN. “Corporate executives who profit through fraud do so at the expense of public confidence in our financial markets.”

“The FBI is committed to aggressively investigating corporate fraud wherein self-dealing corporate executives design schemes to deceive investors, auditors, and analysts about the true financial condition of the corporation,” said Assistant Director-in-Charge MARK J. MERSHON.

Assistant United States Attorneys JONATHAN R. STREETER and JOAN M. LOUGHNANE are in charge of the prosecution. The charges and allegations contained in the Indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Westchester Guardian/Jeanine Pirro.

Tursday, October 2, 2008

Westchester Citizens Picket
Warner Brothers Over Pirro Show

Some 35 protestors and sign-carrying demonstrators showed up at Warner Brothers’ executive of-fices on West 53rd Street in Manhattan last Thursday morning. Many carried signs declaring, “BOYCOTT CW-11.” Others were holding placards protesting Jeanine Pirro’s treatment of former New York City Transit Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo, Yonkers resident Anthony DiSimone, and her handling of the death of Harrison High School Senior Rob Viscome, as well as her overall encouragement of prosecutorial misconduct.

Civil rights attorney Jonathan Lovett, of White Plains, an arch-opponent of Mrs. Pirro, throughout her 12 years as Westchester’s law enforcement officer, reviewed numerous cases mishandled by her Office which resulted in wrongful convictions.

Jeffrey Deskovic, exonerated after 16 years in State Prison, having been wrongfully convicted of rape and murder at 16, described how Mrs. Pirro refused to permit comparison of the DNA from the victim’s rape kit to the State DNA database of known felons, thus keeping him in prison for seven years longer despite her knowledge that his DNA was not a match. Deskovic questioned Warner Brothers’ judgment in selecting Jeanine Pirro as a judge figure given her prosecutorial misconduct and her extraordinarily harmful on innocent individuals and their families.

Guardian Publisher Sam Zherka announced that the demonstration was merely a spontaneous event organized in less than 24 hours, and, that if Warner Brothers and WC-11 continue to air Jeanine Pirro, there would be demonstration after demonstration involving hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of protestors, if necessary.

Janet Difiore.

Thursday, January 17, 2008


The Advocate
Richard Blassberg


When Truth And Justice Are Overwhelmed By Celebrity Worship

In the recent evidentiary hearing into the circumstances surrounding the conviction of former New York City Transit Police Officer Richard
DiGuglielmo, the District Attorney’s recently-released “Post-Hearing Submission,” is a document clearly not written to the Court to which it
has been handed but, rather, to the Appellate Division, Second Department, who the Office obviously believes they will be appealing to, as
though a foregone conclusion.

Consistent with their approach to, and disrespectful treatment of, Judge Rory J. Bellantoni’s Court throughout the hearing, the submission is filled with arrogant assertions and assumptions regarding that Court, and its clear and unwavering determination to discover the truth with regard to the handling of Michael Dillon and other key witnesses to the tragic events at the Venice Deli on October 3, 1996, by Dobbs Ferry Police and the Westchester District Attorney’s Office. And, if the information alleged and sworn to by that witness compelled it, the admission of sworn testimony from others as well, to proceed where necessary.

The DA’s Office demonstrates its willingness, indeed, its desire, to perpetuate the confabulation and denial of truth upon which the conviction of a man, an off-duty New York City Transit Police Officer, who saved the life of an unarmed, middle-aged man who happened to be his own father, from a metal bat-wielding assailant who happened to be a Black man, was based, as well as his imprisonment for 20 Years To Life.

It is not totally surprising that the office, the top ranks of which are staffed by most of the same attorneys who engaged in the kind of egregious prosecutorial misconduct that kept 376 pages, 52 boxes and miles of exculpatory audio and videotape, concealed for 13 long years, until forced to present and acknowledge them in Federal District Court last April; thus resulting in the release of Anthony DiSimone after seven years of imprisonment for a crime they knew he was innocent of, would now, in desperation, try any device, any lie, to avoid yet
another exposure and reversal of their unlawful, malicious and cruel treatment of an innocent individual in total disregard of, and disrespect for, his Constitutionally-guaranteed rights. In point of fact, Patricia Murphy and Perry Perone, who prosecuted Officer Richard DiGuglielmo and who sent the Dobbs Ferry Police Department forward on its unlawful, mindless mission to change the original statements of the only three individuals who actually witnessed the entire tragic exchange, including the fatal shooting of Charles Campbell, hold very high rank in the Westchester DA’s Office today.

Having attended each of the eight days of hearings before Judge Rory Bellantoni, the truth of the old bromide that instructs “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” was never more evident than in the unfolding of testimony and the contortions
of the District Attorney’s Office, mostly through the filibustering and obfuscation, practiced throughout the proceedings by ADA Timothy
Ward. Patricia Murphy who, upon arrival at the scene of the tragic encounter the evening of October 3, 1996, declared within 25 minutes, in
her notebook, that it was a “Second Degree Murder” despite the statements to police by Michael Dillon, Jimmy White, and Kevin O’Donnell that what they had just witnessed was a shooting “in self-defense.” Murphy, who testified at the hearing, called as a witness by the Respondent DA’s Office had, from the very moment she stepped foot on the crime scene, learning of a bat-wielding, but Black, assailant, shot and killed by an Italian-American off-duty New York City Transit Police Of-ficer, decided it could only be Murder; and the Hell with the eyewitness accounts of the only three witnesses who had seen all 90 seconds of what had happened, the Hell with the Truth. She and her Office would do whatever was necessary to make the statements to police and the ultimate testimony line up with her charge, the charge that would have the most political benefit to her boss, Jeanine Pirro. Murphy would do whatever was necessary, even if it meant that she would put the Dobbs Ferry Police Department, its 35-year-old Chief, George Longworth, and all three of its detectives: Guarnieri, Ellman, and Gelardi, on a mission to make each of the three eyewitnesses lie, and change their statements, and ultimately their in-court testimony, both before the grand jury and at trial, to comport with her false charges.

ADA Patricia Murphy, who Jeanine Pirro had called upon to lie and prostitute herself for her so many times over the years, to put out fires as she did in the aftermath of young Rob Viscome’s death at Pirro’s next door neighbors, the Porzio’s house, was called upon at the hearing to put out the fire, and possible inferno, of witness-tampering and turning, unlawful activity by the Dobbs Ferry Police Department, perhaps at the direction of the DA’s Office, being alleged by a former key witness in the Richard DiGuglielmo case. She was, after all, the lead prosecutor; she was, after all, fully familiar with Mr. Campbell’s long criminal rap sheet and his history of physical violence. And, as is customary, she, as the prosecutor, did direct the activities of the Dobbs Ferry Police, and not the other way around.

Having observed Patricia Murphy through numerous trials over the years, those where her performance had been praiseworthy and was so acknowledged, and those where she had no problem carrying out a malicious prosecution of a clearly innocent individual, each with the same force and authority, the Patricia Murphy who appeared before Judge Rory Bellantoni, was unlike any previously observed. She was markedly red-faced, and conspicuously nervous; not at all her usual confident, take-charge self. If ADAs Tim Ward and Robert Sauer thought that Murphy would somehow come in and put out the fire, offer testimony that would weaken or somehow impeach what Michael Dillon had testified to, or Jimmy White shared under oath, they were both sadly mistaken.

In light of what the Court had already heard, not to mention the obstruct and delay strategy Mr. Ward engaged in, her attempt to minimize the role of her Office, and specifically herself, in the development of the case, and the manipulation of the three chief witnesses, was simply not credible, particularly coming from someone with her record and reputation for forcefully taking charge! She was unconvincing, and she knew it, as she sat uncomfortably in the witness chair, hoping that the Judge wouldn’t scrutinize her misrepresentations, particularly regarding the extent of her involvement between October 3rd and 12th of 1996.

Murphy had to deal with the “tangled web” of her own creation. She had to take the same “not credible” position, in plain language, she had to lie, commit perjury before Judge Bellantoni with regard to whether Michael Dillon, Kevin O’Donnell and Jimmy White had, in fact, been interrogated two or three times by Dobbs Ferry Police between their October 3rd statements and their October 8th statements, their so-called first and second statements. She had to tell the same story, the same lie, that Detective Lieutenant Guarnieri told, sitting in the same “hot seat”.

What an awkward position Patricia Murphy found herself in, attempting to portray herself as uninvolved, almost ‘laid-back’, during those first critical nine days following the shooting; denying any personal involvement, particularly with Michael Dillon, until at least October 12th. How despicable of her to attempt to make it appear that neither she, nor anyone from the DA’s Office, was calling the shots as the Dobbs Ferry Police Department’s entire Detective Division, not to mention Chief Longworth himself, were so totally consumed, night after night, attempting to make three eyewitnesses lie, by altering their statements to no longer support the self defense that required Officer DiGuglielmo to shoot Charles Campbell; but to, instead, make it appear that the shots were fired at a man who was really so afraid of a middle-aged man whose hand he had just broken and whose leg he had just savaged with a metal baseball bat. Campbell had to be so afraid that he was “backing up defensively”, not swinging for the man’s head as the “three rounds to center mass” dropped him in the act
of swinging, as all three witnesses had originally described.

Of course, although she would be espousing the same fiction as Detective Guarnieri that neither Dillon, O’Donnell or White were ever repeatedly interrogated, taken from their jobs, and brought to Dobbs Ferry Police Headquarters between October 3rd and October 8th, knowingly committing the same perjury, ADA Murphy was, by the same token, tossing the Dobbs Ferry Police to the wolves. After all, none of the three witnesses, Dillon and White in particular, who testified before Judge Bellantoni, ever implicated any department
other than the Dobbs Ferry Police in their harassment and treatment as though they were suspects.

By denying any connection, either by herself or any member of the DA’s Office with what was done to produce altered, false statements and testimony, Patricia Murphy made it appear that if, indeed, such repeated long interrogations were conducted by the Dobbs Ferry Police, they did it on their own hook; they engaged in unlawful activity for their own purposes and not because the DA needed them to.

Let this sordid tale be a lesson to all of the 44 police departments in Westchester. No matter what promises or authority the Westchester DA’s Office offered you in the past, or may offer you in the future, to get you to violate the rights of innocent citizens; when the truth finally emerges, as it has in the DiGuglielmo case, it becomes “everyone for themselves.” They will not care how badly, having done their dirty work, will make you look, or what happens to your career, so long as it’s your butt in a sling, and not theirs. Imagine the celebrity worship and the promise it took to turn the detectives and the Chief of the Dobbs Ferry Police “dirty”, against another innocent
police officer whose shoes they could have been standing in.

Janet Difiore.

The Court Report
By Richard Blassberg


Richard Diguglielmo: Setting The Facts Straight

Last Wednesday, January 2nd, in a front page article in The Journal News, entitled, ‘08 Brings Hope For DiGuglielmo, some statements were made that this reporter, who attended every one of eight days of hearings before County Court Judge Rory J. Bellantoni, believes deserve some clarification and correction.

For one thing, while it is true that the 440.10 Petition filed by former New York City Transit Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo was based
upon the sworn statements of Michael Dillon, who had recanted his final statement to the Dobbs Ferry Police as well as his statement at
trial, the following must be kept in mind:

• Richard DiGuglielmo’s petition was filed well more than a year prior to the evidentiary hearing conducted by Judge Bellantoni.

• At the hearing, Mr. Dillon’s testimony was quite clear about the fact that, although his statement to Dobbs Ferry Police on the night of the tragic incident, October 3, 1996, was identical to what he told News 4 New York, that Charles Campbell, who had already struck Of-ficer DiGuglielmo’s middle-aged father twice “very hard” with a metal baseball bat, was swinging the bat toward the older man’s head at the moment he was shot three times, his final statement given to Dobbs Ferry Police about 1:00 a.m. October 8th was substantially different
because, for at least three nights in between, he was taken from his job at CTI in Mamaroneck by all three detectives of the Dobbs Ferry
Department as well as Chief George Longworth, and transported, like a suspect, to their headquarters, and grilled for hours until he said what they wanted to hear from him.

• Having altered his original, honest, and accurate account, Dillon told Judge Bellantoni that he felt “stuck” with the account that he gave in the wee hours of October 8th and thus repeated it, at trial, fearing what might be done to him if he gave his original, accurate account that the shooting was clearly “self-defense.”

• In addition to Mr. Dillon, a Mr. James White, who also witnessed the incident from start to finish and had told Dobbs Ferry Police that it was “self-defense” was likewise harassed and treated like a suspect, but refused to alter his account, even after numerous interrogation sessions similar to what Mr. Dillon reported at the hearing. Mr. White was never called as a witness.

• Dobbs Ferry Detective Lieutenant Guarnieri, testifying for the Respondent District Attorney’s Office, attempted to deny any knowledge of the repeated questioning of Dillon and White between October 3 and October 8, 1996, and was not credible.

The Journal News article quoted Attorney Debra Cohen, who it identified as “representing the Campbell family” but failed to inform readers that Cohen and her attorney-husband, Randolph McLaughlin, who attended the criminal trial as spectators, and were involved in the 52 weeks of paid pickets under Al Sharpton outside the DiGuglielmo’s deli, had proceeded, following that trial, to collect $460,000 for William Campbell, brother of Charles Campbell, and themselves, in a Wrongful Death civil action.


Under the circumstances, Debra Cohen’s statement, quoted in the article, “There is no reason for the decision (the conviction) not to stand,” is obviously self-serving. To state, as the article goes on to do, “The deli had a history of fretting over their spaces,” immediately followed by, “Campbell was confronted by three men, including DiGuglielmo and his father,” is misleading. Given that, firstly, the elder DiGuglielmo had asked Campbell to park a few feet away in the same lot, but not in front of the store window. And, only upon Campbell’s refusal did he then place a “No Parking” sticker on Campbell’s window as the Dobbs Ferry Police had instructed him to do, long before the incident.

Secondly, and more significantly, to state, “Campbell was confronted by three men,” was a complete misrepresentation of the facts given
that it was undisputed, even at trial, that Charles Campbell, upon being told by the “pizza shop owner”, a man involved in illegal drug distribution, that a sticker had been put on his car window, ran across the street, fists flying, to pummel the elder DiGuglielmo, whose son Richard, and son-in-law Robert Errico, happened to be inside the store and came out to protect the father.

It is somewhat surprising that The Journal News saw fit to give vent to the sentiments of Attorney Debra Cohen but failed to contact any
of Mr. DiGuglielmo’s attorneys for their statement. Nevertheless, the article does acknowledge James White’s testimony at the hearing, stating, “During the hearing, Dillon’s accusation of police intimidation was supported by another witness, James White, who said Dobbs Ferry Police tried pressuring him into changing his account.”

However, while accurately reporting that Mr. White refused to change his account of what he had witnessed on the evening of October
3, 1996 in the parking lot of the Venice Deli, the statement that he “was considered unreliable by both Prosecutors and Defense lawyers
and was never called to testify,” was completely incorrect. The fact was Prosecutors knew that the Dobbs Ferry Police had failed, even after
repeated long interrogations, to get White to waver from his original statement and were, of course, not about to call a witness who would
give a truthful account of a “shooting in self-defense.”

As for the Defense attorneys’ unwillingness to call Mr. White as a witness at trial, that had to do with his stated unwillingness to meet
with them prior to trial, in deference to his 76-year-old father who was in failing health, who was a former FBI agent, and who forbid him from doing so. As explained by Defense counsel Steven Lewis, at the hearing, firstly, the Prosecution had withheld any information about White’s and Dillon’s repeated interrogations by Dobbs Ferry Police from the Defense in Discovery. And, secondly, no Defense attorney would ever put on a witness, at trial, who had flatly refused to meet with him prior to testifying.

In reality, there were really only three eyewitnesses to the entire incident, including the shooting, all of which is estimated to have taken
no more than 90 seconds. Those three witnesses are Michael Dillon and Jimmy White, both of whom testified at the recent hearing, called
by Judge Bellantoni, as well as Kevin O’Donnell, who was seated in the CTI van next to Dillon, directly viewing the incident. Mr. O’Donnell, while unwilling to come to New York from Florida, had nonetheless corroborated to Defense investigators, from his own experience, the accounts of repeated interrogations by Dobbs Ferry Police testified to by Dillon and White.

The Guardian has been advised that attorneys for Mr. DiGuglielmo have submitted a Post Hearing Brief, of just under 50 pages, and the
Westchester District Attorney’s Office has submitted one of approximately 100 pages. A decision, with regard to the need for a new trial
based upon the evidence presented in the eight-day hearing, is expected in open court on January 30.

Janet Difiore.

The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

Eyewitness Who Refused To Lie Under Pressure Exposes District Attorney And Dobbs Ferry Police

Last Monday, December 3, James White, now residing in Florida, came forward to speak the truth about what he had witnessed on October 3, 1996 at about 5pm in the parking lot of the Venice Deli on Ashford Avenue in Dobbs Ferry. And, what he had to say put the lie to what former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine
Pirro invented, and her two obedient co-conspirators, Assistant DAs Patricia Murphy and Perry Perrone, attempted to force down every witness’ throat through the incessant harassment tactics of the Dobbs Ferry Police, including then 35-year-old Police Chief George Longworth.

On that tragic late afternoon, Charles Campbell, a White Plains sanitation worker, enraged that middle-aged Richard DiGuglielmo, proprietor of the Venice Deli, had put a ‘No Parking’ sticker on his window, the window of his latemodel Corvette, came running back from across the street, fists flying; the fists of an amateur boxer and bodybuilder. It would take the police officer son and construction worker son-in-law of the elder DiGuglielmo, as well as himself, to wrestle the out-of-control Campbell, a man with a lengthy arrest record, and a history of numerous incidents of violence, to the ground.

Having contained him, they foolishly took him at his word when he said, “Enough,” and let him up on his feet, believing the incident was over and Campbell would drive off. Instead, he went directly to the trunk of his car and retrieved a metal baseball bat. Without hesitation he began swinging very hard at the elder DiGuglielmo, who had remained momentarily outside as his son and son-in-law headed into the deli to wash up from the scuffle.

With the first two swings Campbell had broken the elder man’s hand and seriously injured his leg with blows that one witness had originally described as, “so hard you could hear them a block away.”

The bat-wielding assailant was now swinging for the father’s head when Richard DiGuglielmo, his son, a New York City Transit Police Officer, emerged from the store and fired “three rounds to center mass” as trained to do in such situations, each shot entering the body from a different point as Campbell swung.

James White told Judge Rory J. Bellantoni last Monday at the 440.10 Hearing of Richard DiGuglielmo, “There was no doubt in my mind then, and there is no question in my mind now, that those shots were fired by a son attempting to save his father’s life.”

Called to the scene, Assistant DA Patricia Murphy’s notes reveal she was not the least bit concerned with the eyewitness accounts of Jimmy White, Michael Dillon or Kevin O’Donnell, all of whom had told responding police and television news reporters that Officer DiGuglielmo’s shooting of Campbell, “was clearly in self-defense.” Within 25 minutes of her arrival, she already concluded that the shooting was Second Degree Murder.
Thus was begun another prosecution of opportunity for then-DA Jeanine Pirro. Had the bat-wielding assailant been Caucasian, Patricia Murphy might have been given different marching orders from Pirro. But, under the circumstances, Pirro wanted it to be a bias crime, irrespective of the truth. From the moment Pirro stepped into the tragedy with the foot of Patricia Murphy, the “Race Card” would be played for all it would mean to her upcoming re-election effort.

Jeanine Pirro called it a bias crime, so therefore it had to be made into a bias crime. After all, Pirro had called the Louis Balancio stabbing the work of Anthony DiSimone, despite the fact that she had a confession and a bloody leather jacket from the actual killer, Nick Djonovic, just six days after that brutal murder. But she wasn’t looking for an Albanian. Pirro needed someone whose name ended in a vowel; someone who would put to rest the notion that she could not prosecute Organized Crime.

Of course, if Jeanine Pirro said it was a bias crime, the Dobbs Ferry Police, Detectives Ellman, Gelardi, Guarnieri and Chief Longworth, would now have to convince eyewitnesses O’Donnell, Dillon and White that what they reported seeing, an off-duty Police Officer son saving his father’s life from the beating with a metal baseball bat that Charles Campbell was delivering with all of his might, didn’t really happen that way.

Now, Michael Dillon was only 20 years old and surely no match for the cunning and devisiveness that three detectives and a police chief were going to employ. They showed up at his place of employment in Mamaroneck four nights in a row to bring him back to Dobbs Ferry in a police car, like a suspect, sandwiched between two detectives in the back seat. He was grilled for hours and hours until, finally, in the wee hours of the morning of October 8, 1996, he could not take the harassment and intimidation any longer and changed his account of
what he had witnessed so that it conformed with the lie DA Pirro was demanding the Dobbs Ferry Police produce.

Kevin O’Donnell would pose a different task. He and Dillon were working together for T.C.I. of Mamaroneck, doing cable television installations for Cablevision, when they happened upon the tragic incident. O’Donnell, some 10 years or more older than Dillon, was the younger man’s supervisor. In giving his statement to Dobbs Ferry Police, shortly after the incident, he, too, like Dillon and White, stated that Officer DiGuglielmo fired at the bat-wielding assailant, Charles Campbell, “in self defense.” However, for whatever foolish reason, O’Donnell attempted to embellish his role, claiming initially that he had gotten out of the van in which he was seated with Dillon in an effort to disarm Campbell.

That unecessary embellishment, which was quickly discovered to be untrue, placed O’Donnell at the mercy of
the Dobbs Ferry Police. Additionally, O’Donnell’s wife was an officer with the Yonkers Police Department at
the time. And, the combination of those factors simplified the task of getting O’Donnell to change his original account of the incident.

Jimmy White, who testified last Monday, posed a very different problem. White was the son of a former FBI agent who, at the time of the killing, was 76 and in poor health. His father had made it clear that he did not want Jimmy, a schoolteacher at Morris High School in the Bronx, to testify. To make matters more difficult for White, he had three brothers, one of whom was also an FBI agent like their dad; another who was an Assistant District Attorney in Pirro’s office, and a third, who was then, and still is now, a police officer in the Dobbs Ferry Department.

To his credit, despite pressure from his father, as well as his brothers, not to speak with Defense lawyers, as well as the pressure of several interrogation sessions by the Dobbs Ferry Police, similar to what had been used against Dillon, Jimmy White, nevertheless, never altered his account of what he had witnessed. In giving his account last Monday before Judge Rory Bellantoni, he not only supported Dillon’s original statement to the police, but also supported Dillon’s testimony several days earlier, describing repeated interrogations for many hours by Dobbs Ferry Police, three between his so-called “first statement” of October 3, and “second statement” at one o’clock in the morning of October 8, 1996.

White’s testimony was very damaging and impeaching to the prior testimony of Detective Guarnieri and Assistant DA Patricia Murphy as well; Guarnieri, having insisted that neither Dillon, O’Donnell, nor White were ever repeatedly interrogated between their October 3 and October 8 statements. Patricia Murphy had told the Court that she did not become involved with the witnesses until October 12 and yet, Mr. White testified that on October 11 Murphy’s partner, ADA Perry Perrone, had tried repeatedly to get him to change his statement, specifically to say that he had heard racial epithets. White refused to be budged.

Truth be told, Officer Richard DiGuglielmo was not the only innocent person railroaded into prison by the Westchester DA’s Office in conspiracy with the Dobbs Ferry Police Department under Chief Longworth. Steven Nowicki, a former Dobbs Ferry teacher, is serving 16 years for an alleged sodomy of a child that never even occurred, but was the invention of the child’s mother, a woman who was upset that she couldn’t persuade Nowicki to become involved with her, despite more than 20 emails she had sent him that the Westchester
District Attorney’s Office made disappear.

Robert DeRosario, a convicted pedophile, but neither a kidnapper nor a murderer, was convicted little more than two years ago of the kidnapping and murder of Orlandito Maldonado Rosario, a 12-year-old boy whose body was found buried in a shallow grave near the Saw Mill River Parkway in Dobbs Ferry, despite the fact that more than five years of investigation produced not one shred of material evidence linking DeRosario to the crime.

DeRosario’s van, which was described differently by each of four “jailhouse snitches” as being involved in the crime, was actually off the road and out of operation at a diagnostic auto repair shop in Brooklyn for several days prior to and following the date of the victim’s death.

For 12 long years, Jeanine Pirro made up the stories as she went along. She had no difficulty getting 42 different police departments to dance to her tune. Dobbs Ferry was just one, if perhaps one of the more willing, of several departments that knowingly helped to convict and send to prison innocent people.

The present DA, having spent six years under Pirro (1994-2000), is well aware of literally scores of innocent persons, many still in prison, for crimes they did not commit. In two years in office as DA, she has shown
little willingness to undo the horrific injustice visited upon persons such as Richard DiGuglielmo, Anthony DiSimone, Steven Nowicki, Jing Kelly, Selwyn Days, Kareem Bryan, Matthew McKerrick, and the family of Robert Viscome, as well as many others. On the contrary, the prosecutorial misconduct practiced under Pirro, continues today, and the Practicioners of Injustice, whose mindless, evil conduct has caused much misery in exchange for two paychecks a month, remain in that office.

Janet Difiore.

The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

By All Means, Let’s Open Pandora’s Box

Last Tuesday afternoon, November 27, following the fifth day of hearings before Westchester County Court Judge Rory J. Bellantoni, into the 440.10 Application of former New York City Transit Police Officer Richard
DiGuglielmo, Debra Cohen, attorney, and wife of attorney Randolph McLaughlin, told News 12, “They are retrying this case without any reasonable showing of why that should happen.” Of course, that comment could
not have been further from the truth. But, given the fact that Debra and her husband had represented William Campbell in the civil Wrongful Death trial that yielded $460,000, based essentially on the wrongful conviction of Officer DiGuglielmo for Depraved Indifference Murder, in his self-defense shooting of Charles Campbell 11
years ago, her assessment, her spin, was to be expected.

However, she also suggested before the camera, that DiGuglielmo, who has already served 10 years of a 20-year-to-life sentence for saving his middle-aged father’s life from a bat-wielding, body-building, enraged assailant, “should not be opening Pandora’s Box.” To that remark, I would reply that, in Westchester, Pandora’s
Box is the Office of the District Attorney; and, nothing would be better for the People of Westchester than to blow the lid off of it.

Coming on the heels of Anthony DiSimone’s exoneration, and release from prison, for the killing of Louis Balancio; a 13-year dastardly lie proffered by Jeanine Pirro, the 440.10 Hearing into the circumstances surrounding the changing of eyewitnesses’ statements to the Dobbs Ferry Police, under pressure from the
Westchester District Attorney’s Office, in the Richard DiGuglielmo case, threatens to bring down the evil office and lay bare the ugly truth.

Twelve years of psychopathic confabulations and prosecutions of opportunity by a conscienceless creature, assisted by numerous equally immoral assistants, capable of the worst imaginable prosecutorial misconduct in exchange for two paychecks a month, created an “Office from Hell”, zealously preserved and camouflaged by the present DA, for whom even 376 pages and 52 boxes filled with exculpatory information, were not enough to make her do the right thing until Anthony DiSimone’s attorneys put her back to the wall with the prospect that each and every one of those exculpating items would be exposed in open Federal Court in a hearing into a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

Despite attorney Debra Cohen’s spin, the simple truth is that the first five days of Richard DiGuglielmo’s 440.10 Hearing, lengthened mostly by Assistant DA Timothy Ward’s constant filibustering, calculated to obfuscate every issue, did, nonetheless, produce some remarkable testimony.

Mr. Michael Dillon, whose account shortly after the tragic incident on the evening of October 3, 1996, and some four days later, into the wee hours of October 8; and, some three more nights in between, not to mention the circumstances by which they were extracted from him, painted a picture of a police department on a mission to produce testimony that would support the district attorney’s self-serving, totally fictional, account of what had occured in the parking lot of the Venice Deli on Ashford Ave., in Dobbs Ferry. Dillon’s comment to Channel 4
News, “You see your father getting beat with a bat; you’re going to do something about it. So it was self-defense from where I saw it,” was so self-evident and clear, no one in the courtroom, least of all Judge Bellantoni, could reasonably accept the statement Dobbs Ferry Police pulled from him after yanking him from his job four nights in a row to interrogate him over and over, for three to four hours at a time, until they got what they wanted from him.

Then there was the testimony of Assistant DA Patricia Mary Murphy, one of the worst of the worst with regard to the mindless prosecution of innocent people, literally for sport. In years of watching her ply her evil trade, never had I seen her so nervous, so red-faced, so full of crap. She, who, 11 years ago, within 20 minutes of arrival at the scene, had already decided that Richard DiGuglielmo would be charged with murder, despite the fact that at least three eyewitnesses had stated that Charles Campbell, the assailant with the bat, had struck Officer DiGuglielmo’s middle-aged father twice, hard, with a metal baseball bat and was swinging again at the moment he was shot.

Ms. Murphy would have had the Court believe that she played no affirmative role in the direction the Dobbs Ferry Police went in their harassing and repetitive efforts to produce statements that would confirm her boss,
Jeanine Pirro’s, “race card fiction.”

Then there was Detective Lieutenant Guarnieri of the Dobbs Ferry Police, who could not explain to Judge Bellantoni how it was that on October 3rd he had four witnesses, all of whom were stating that the assailant,
Charles Campbell, was swinging the bat at the moment he was shot, and yet he, and Chief Longworth, were charging Officer DiGuglielmo with murder. Guarnieri came across as a very bad liar.

By Tuesday afternoon Judge Bellantoni had witnessed so much “notcredible” testimony, so many inconsistent and contradictory statements, that Michael Dillon’s testimony, despite his “malliable” persona, as described
by the Judge, was sufficiently compelling to convince him that he now needed to hear sworn testimony from James White, and, if possible, from Kevin O’Donnell, each of whom had originally testified to a self-defense
scenario.

With the suggestion that he was now considering bringing White and O’Donnell to Court, all Hell began to break loose at the DA’s table. One could almost smell the fear between ADAs Robert Sauer and Timothy
Ward as they now both began to take the strongest possible position with the Judge in opposition to his suggestion.

Finally, in desperation, they refused to call their next witness, DA Investigator Ed Murphy, who had been in the room at the Office of the Westchester District Attorney on August 11, 2007 when Michael Dillon, who
was called in, was told, amongst other things, by ADA Ward, “In 1996 it was a race issue,” and he, Dillon, “would be opening himself up again.” The truth is, the incident was about race only in the evil mind of Jeanine
Pirro; it would play better for her politically if she made up such a fiction. Within days of the incident Pirro would go to the media and press, claiming that she had 13 witnesses who had heard racial epithets. At trial, she couldn’t produce one.

It was never about race, it was about rage; Charles Campbell’s rage; the rage one of his former employers, who liked him, was referring to when he told me, several years later, “Charlie was funny like that; he’d pick a fight
with anyone at any time.” Charles Campbell would’ve met the same fate if he was Caucasian and beating Officer DiGuglielmo’s father with a metal baseball bat.

Wednesday morning showed Mr. Ward in his most arrogant and disrespectful mode. A session intended to iron out the details and scheduling of James White’s appearance, as well as possibly including the testimony of
DA Investigator Ed Murphy, previously withheld by ADA Ward on Tuesday as if in retaliation for the possibility that Judge Bellantoni would now be bringing Mr. White to Court to testify, was instead turned into a misguided
tirade.

Nobody in the courtroom was quite prepared for what Mr. Ward immediately launched into. He opened with, “I’ve been in the DAs Office for 22 years, and I have never brought a motion such as I am now bringing. The
proceedings have gone forward in a manner inconsistent with the statutory requirements of 440.10.”

Ward then went on and on, based upon a conversation he claimed he had had with Debra Cohen, essentially hearsay, in an effort to attack the integrity, judicial knowledge, and motives of Judge Bellantoni; accusing him of having had ex parte communication with Cohen, and improperly attempting to involve her in an amicus curiæ correspondence with the Court.

Using phrases such as, “deeply disturbing,” and “frustrating,” Ward, without benefit of deposition or signed affidavit, went completely ‘over the top’, ostensibly describing every detail of what he had been told by Cohen,
had transpired between herself and the Judge, as if he, Ward, had been in chambers with them.

Ward went further, “It would seem to suggest an appearance of impropriety and that Ms. Cohen would walk this conversation out to the (Campbell) family.”

Bellantoni, having given Ward enough rope to hang himself, attempted to reassure him and save him from himself, commenting, “If the purported events were true; but they are not.” But Ward, who was too far into his
accusatory mode, now pulled out every beef he had from the start of the hearing. Ward was willing to make a damned fool of himself, showing his true colors and his utter disrespect for both the Court and Due Process.

Tolerating about as much of Ward’s tirade as he could stand, attorney Schapiro now broke in with, “If I may be heard briefly, Your Honor, it’s been my experience throughout these proceedings that you have ruled against us as often as for us. If you had wanted to rule for us, we gave you ample opportunity.”

Then, addressing another serious allegation Ward had levelled, Schapiro said, “The Court didn’t ask ‘how do I get around Policano,’ but rather you asked me ‘how do you get around Policano?’”

Bellantoni now explained, “I was concerned about a family, the Campbells, that has gone unheard and who might have had the opportunity to express their thoughts.”

Neither Debra Cohen nor Randolph McLaughlin, her husband, were in the courtroom for the morning session. Bellantoni adjourned for lunch, reserving his decision on ADA Ward’s motion asking him to recuse himself,
until reconvening at 2pm.

Following lunch, Bellantoni announced, “I’ve considered the application during the break and the outrageous assertions.” The Judge then proceeded to give a comprehensive, text-book definition, of amicus curiæ including
several citations to leading authorities. Pausing, he then said, “I find Mr. Ward’s allegations shocking and unethical, based solely upon information provided by Ms. Cohen. He then formally denied Ward’s motion.

Debra Cohen’s, and Tim Ward’s, cheap scheme had failed miserably as well it should have. Justice would not be derailed, nor denied. James White was scheduled to appear Monday morning, December 3rd.

The Court Report
Richard Blassberg

Jing and Tristram Kelly Update: “A Shameful and Grievous Commentary On The
Condition Of The New York State Unified Court System”

The following is a report from attorney Robert Wayburn who has alternately been representing Jing Kelly and her parents in their struggle to be reunited with Jing’s now-7-year-old son Tristram for more than five years.

The court appearance in Jing’s case was brief Tuesday morning, August 28th. The trial lawyer for ACS and
the Legal Aid Society trial lawyer, the assigned law guardian, were both away on vacation.

ACS submitted a new Permanency Plan Report which was supposed to have been served 14 days in advance
of the hearing, and, thus, was very late. ACS, noting that Tristram said he was reluctant to continue visitation
sessions with Jing, his “birth mother”, if by his doing this, he would be making it more likely that he will be uprooted from his current home in California (with Doug and Cori Kelly) and sent to New York City to live with Jing.

Jing noted that this was an astute observation to be made by a seven-year old child and, thusly, she wonders if
it is the product of discussions about the pending litigation held between Tristram and Doug and Cori Kelly.

ACS concluded that further visitation should be denied until such time as Tristram requests it be resumed. It would be strange, indeed, for a seven-year-old boy to be in control of visitation. The ACS recommendation in this regard is totally unacceptable to Jing.

Judge Schechter granted Mr. Schiff ’s application to consolidate the custody petition of Douglas and Cori Kelly with the permanent neglect proceeding. Jing objected to this but to no avail. On September 4, 2007, the court was scheduled to establish trial dates for both cases.

In the meanwhile, Jing still has no contact with her son, neither by telephone, nor by e-mail, nor by regular mail. How is Tristram to get to know his mother if he continues to be kept isolated. No new visits were scheduled.
I objected to the report of the social worker who monitored the visits in California, noting that it was beyond the scope of her court appointment order to make recommendations. That objection will be decided on the next court date.

All in all, it was a disappointing day for Jing. Tristram will never be reunited with her if he is left in the care of Doug and Cori Kelly and Mr. Schiff may substantially delay the new permanency hearing by being permitted to call his custody witnesses first. Jing feels she and Tristram were not given a chance to work things out between them. No competent decision can be based solely on five visitation sessions between a seven-year-old boy and his mother, neither of whom have seen each other for more than four years.

Analysis:

What we are now witnessing in this American Family Court Tragedy is the fulfillment of the most fervent
and cruel wishes of Gail Kelly Hiler and Judge Sara P. Schechter who, for several years, acting in concert, aided
and abetted by other members of the Kelly family, have succeeded in keeping a loving mother and her son apart.
There can be no question that this cruelty has been, and continues to be, at least partially racially motivated, and
has likely been financed by substantial funds left to the child by his deceased father but under the control of Gail
Hiler.

At no time was it ever established that Jing Kelly did anything harmful to her infant son. To the contrary, her taking him to China for some 18 months, when he was barely six months old, was motivated by her justifiable concerns caused by the child’s 24/7 contact with his alcoholic, abusive father in the Hiler household, in blatant defiance of court-imposed restrictions limiting his contact to supervised visitation.

All of the unlawful activities which Judge Schechter has engaged in with respect to this mother and child, as well as all of the perjury, connivance and cruelty employed by Gail Hiler in their joint malicious and bigoted scheme against this loving mother, cannot be permitted to succeed in perpetuity by virtue of the harm already imposed. The fact that this un-Constitutional and inhumane scheme has flourished unfettered, either by rulings or mandamus from the Appellate Division, First Department, insisting upon the reunification of mother and child, nearly two years ago, is a shameful and grievous commentary on the condition of the New York State Unified Court System.

Janet Difiore.

The Advocate
Richard Blassberg


Blue Ribbon Panel Delivers White Paper DA Asked For Findings Expose Worst-Case Police and Prosecutorial Misconduct


A gesture by Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore more than six months ago, described by Jeffrey Deskovic as “almost unprecedented,” last Monday produced a 38-page report entitled Report on the Conviction of Jeffrey Deskovic. The report, generated
by a most distinguished panel of four, retired Judges Leslie Crocker Snyder and Peter J. McQuillan, together with former Richmond
DA William L. Murphy, and New York City Legal Aid Supervising Attorney Richard Joselson, pulls no punches despite having derived
its content from the cold record without benefit of live interviews.

For the most part, it fully corroborates what Mr. Deskovic and this column have shared with readers of The Guardian for many months now. Given that fact, it is not the intention of this column to regurgitate the contents of the report, but rather to place it into proper and meaningful context. It should be stated, up front, that Janet DiFiore’s commissioning of the investigation and report by such an eminently qualified panel, several weeks after the release of Jeffrey Deskovic from state prison, was highly commendable and clearly in the public interest.

She was, no doubt, fully cognizant that some of the most significant wrongdoing likely to be uncovered would involve former Assistant DA
George Bolen, and other ADAs as well as current Peekskill Police Chief Eugene Tumolo, and members of his department. After all, she worked side-by-side with Bolen for some twelve years, and was his boss for eight months, until his retirement last August, just weeks before Deskovic’s emergence from prison. With respect to Tumolo and the Peekskill Police Department, a law enforcement agency her office has daily dealings with, commissioning the report surely was no less uncomfortable.


Coming as it does, on the heels of the Duke University/Michael Nifong revelations, and a host of recent exonerations involving prosecutorial misconduct and police malfeasance in New York State, and across the nation, Report on the Conviction of Jeffrey Deskovic does not fall on deaf ears. Par-ticularly here in Westchester, jurisdiction of the grave injustice visited upon a vulnerable and innocent 16-year-old boy who would be made to spend the next sixteen years of his life behind bars as the result of the mindless and unconscionable abuse of power and public trust by a handful of self-serving adults, the lesson is all too compelling.

It is probably correct to state that the presentation of facts is more than ninety-five percent accurate, what few incorrect statements
there are having somehow worked their way into the record over the years. Nevertheless, despite their commendable faithfulness to the
facts, the panel members would seem to have gone out of their way to avoid specifically noting by name four major players in this most
sympathetic of American Judicial Tragedies; Jeanine Pirro, who, despite her present denials, repeatedly thwarted numerous attempts
by Mr. Deskovic to gain a comparison of the DNA which did not match his, with the State DNA Databank; Carl Vergari, elected District
Attorney at the time of Deskovic’s prosecution and conviction, who allowed ADA George Bolen the latitude to deliver a conviction
of a clearly innocent accused by whatever means necessary; Nicholas Colabella, the trial judge who had numerous opportunities
to prevent the tragic outcome that robbed sixteen years of liberty from a young innocent life.

The fourth unnamed wrongdoer was then-Assistant District Attorney Robert Neary, currently an appointed acting State Supreme Court
Judge, about whom Mr. Deskovic told The Guardian, “Without what he did, what happened to me might not have happened.” Deskovic explained, “He interfered with my right to counsel because once I had consulted with a lawyer, who advised me that he would inform the Peekskill Police, and they, in fact, stopped interrogating me, my indelible right to council had attached. However, when the attorney
was not retained, he called Mr. Neary to inform him he would not be the attorney representing me. And, Neary, in turn, told the Peekskill
Police that they could, again, interrogate me without counsel present.”

Unfortunately, it was this same sort of collegial courtesy displayed by the panel to Pirro, Vergari, Colabella and Neary that all too often contributes to the perpetuation of injustice within the justice system. Without needing to fully review the circumstances that led up to the
wrongful arrest, prosecution, and conviction of young Jeffrey Deskovic for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old female schoolmate, Angela
Correa, it is, however, necessary and constructive to note the key players whose misconduct contributed more to the tragic outcome than that of the others, if a clear and workable understanding of what actually occurred is to be teased from the facts. Without a doubt, Eugene Tumolo, former Detective Lieutenant, now Chief of the City of Peekskill Police Department, who choreographed and engineered the outrageously unconstitutional, and unlawful harassment, interrogation, manipulation, and arrest of Jeffrey Deskovic, a youth who he admittedly knew to be innocent by March 2, 1990, was one of two individuals most responsible for the pain and suffering inflicted.

Equally responsible, and as cruelly self-promotional, was Assistant District Attorney George Bolen, who maliciously rushed into the grand
jury on February 27, 1990, to get an indictment, knowing full well the DNA test results that would have defeated that indictment would be
announced within 72 hours. Then, having received those results he proceeded as if they did not exist. At trial, he would tell the jury that the
fact that the DNA found in the fifteen-year-old’s vagina and hairs found on her body did not match accused Jeffrey Deskovic, really didn’t matter because “she had had consensual sex earlier.”

How badly did Mr. Bolen need to convict a sixteen-year-old boy who he plainly knew to be innocent, that he would tell a jury, and all those in the courtroom, including poor Angela Correa’s parents and sister, that it didn’t matter that the Defendant’s DNA didn’t match that found in the vaginal cavity of her limp body because she had had prior unprotected sex with another? On this score, the panel was not imaginative enough, unfortunately working only with the cold record, to realize why clothing exhibits disappeared from the courtroom in the middle of the trial, never to be seen again.

We are told there were issues regarding the pull-over-type sports bra the young victim was wearing, in that it would not have lent itself to
the kind of violent removal by the Defendant that the Prosecution had theorized to the jury. The jury had, in fact, realized that and had called for an examination of the bra during their deliberations, but were compelled to settle for a mere photo of the bra because somehow, mysteriously, the District Attorney’s Exhibit Bag containing all of the clothing found on, and near, the body of Angela Correa, had disappeared. The point missed by the panel, however, involved the victim’s panties.


Mr. Bolen realized he needed to make her clothing disappear once he told the jury that she had had unprotected consensual sex prior to her rape and murder, because if, indeed, she had had such an encounter with someone else prior to the incident, and the semen found in her vagina was not the Defendant’s - and it was not - then clearly there should have been some residue in her panties. Otherwise, the semen found in her vagina must have come from the rapist, and it didn’t match Jeffrey Deskovic’s DNA!

Of course, in fairness to the panel that did a wonderful job; they were not re-trying the case. However, the outrageous disappearance of key evidence, coupled with the willingness by Prosecutor Bolen to do whatever it would take, no matter how unlawful, to obtain a conviction, is what must be learned and fully understood by legislators and concerned citizens everywhere. Mr. Bolen’s conduct was not atypical of him, as those who have observed him over the years, are well aware. Nor was it atypical of the conduct of any number of other ADAs who have worked in the Westchester District Attorney’s Office over many years.

If anything meaningful, and promising can truly be taken from this report, thoughtfully, and bravely, commissioned by DA Janet DiFiore, it
is the fact that there is a compelling need for legislation, both state and federal, to make the kind of prosecutorial misconduct and police malfeasance, exposed in its pages, punishable by financial and incarcerative penalties severe enough to dissuade even the most ambitious self-serving prosecutor, or police officer.

Jeffrey Deskovic has been exonerated, as have more than two hundred innocent individuals rescued by the Innocence Project alone. The sad
truth is that there are literally thousands of innocent persons languishing in prisons across this nation, put there by misguided, self-serving police officers and prosecutors. As tragic as that reality is, we must not forget, as was the case with Mr. Deskovic, having intentionally put the wrong person, an innocent person into prison, the actual rapist and murderer was left free in the community to strike again, and strike he did.


Little more than three years after the wrong man was sent to prison for his crimes, Steven Cunningham, a violent crack-addicted menace to
society, once again struck in Peekskill, murdering Pat Morrison, sister of his girlfriend, under circumstances similar to Angela Correa’s murder. Neither Bolen, nor Tumolo, apparently ever gave thought to Jeffrey Deskovic who would remain in prison for another dozen years.

Janet Difiore.

The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

Pirro-Gate: No One Is Above The Law

As with another power-hungry wrongdoer, who severely abused the authority entrusted by those who elected him, Richard Nixon, tape recording her own misconduct, and that of her co-conspirators, may very well contribute to the ultimate complete exposure and successful prosecution of Jeanine Pirro. And, more importantly, may provide new evidence helpful in the exoneration of numerous victims of her extreme prosecutorial misconduct, and that of many of her assistant DAs, as well as others under her control, operating under the color of law.

The continued existence of tapes that Pirro had ordered destroyed by one of her investigators, was brought to light only recently in connection with the Anthony DiSimone case. DiSimone, who was released from Greenhaven State Prison a few months ago by the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals, on a habeas corpus petition, had compelled District Attorney Janet DiFiore to reveal the existence of 376 pages, and 52 boxes of exhibits, all Brady material, exculpatory evidence, clearly pointing to the fact, from the outset, that DiSimone
was not the murderer of Louis Balancio. DA DiFiore was also compelled to reveal to his defense attorneys that there was even “more Brady
material,” a box filled with secretly recorded tapes that, amongst other things, contained conversations between Pirro, her top level deputies Clement Patti, and Steven Bender, in telephone communication with a top level Assistant United States Attorney, with regard to the Balancio murder and prosecution.

It was no coincidence that at least one of those taped conversations occurred on December 18, 1997. In fact, in December of 1997 then-United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mary Jo White, cleverly “leaked” to Al and Jeanine Pirro the fact that they were both under investigation by her office for a massive, joint, ten-year tax fraud scheme. Whether it was merely a precautionary move, in light of the tip, or more likely, an affirmative attempt to entangle White’s Office in her prosecutorial misconduct, for possible later use as a bargaining tool in dealing with the federal prosecution she feared she and Al might soon face, the recently re-elected Westchester DA
wasn’t letting any control opportunity pass her by.

Not unlike Richard Nixon, who had won his second term by a landslide against George Mc Govern, Pirro, in December, 1997, had just been re-elected to a second term by a two-to-one plurality, albeit, in a fixed race. She was entering her fifth year as DA, at the top of her game, the center of the cabal in total control of Westchester, having already sent numerous innocent indi-viduals to prison for crimes that she knew very well they had not committed, including Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo, convicted only weeks earlier for Depraved Indifference Murder, having saved his middle-aged father’s life from a bat-wielding violent assailant with a long criminal record. Emboldened by her conviction of Officer DiGuglielmo as the result of extreme prosecutorial misconduct, she was now convinced that she could not only
“indict a ham sandwich,” but also convict it. Constitutional rights, the Rule of Law, to Pirro, were mere technicalities. Even a confession from the actual killer of Louis Balancio, six days after his brutal stabbing by Albanian youth, Nick Djonovic, in February of 1994, wouldn’t stop her from inventing a scenario more politically useful, to prosecute an Italian, preferably someone, somehow, connected to Organized Crime.

She would not be deterred from her evil mission, not even by more than two dozen witnesses, young men and women who were present inside and outside the bar, the murder scene, who refused to lie for her. She would send many of them to prison on trumped-up charges, as she pursued that someone, amongst the crowd, having been involved in the rumble on the sidewalk outside the “bucket of blood” - the Strike Zone Bar - in the Tanglewood Shopping Center, Central Avenue, Yonkers. One way or another Jeanine Pirro was out to establish that she could prosecute Organized Crime. And, the fact that the Assistant United States Attorney she was tape recording was telling her, and two of her top deputies, that there was significant evidence that Balancio was murdered by Nick Djonovic, who had escaped to Albania, was not going to alter her plans.

We know there are many tapes, and that not all that was recorded by Pirro necessarily involved criminal investigations. Several current, and former, public office holders, including many judges, as well as political operatives such as Giulio Cavallo, Larry Schwartz, Anthony Mangone, and numerous other co-conspirators had routine telephone access to her. They are now experiencing high anxiety knowing that they were taped, and that those tapes have fallen into the hands of federal investigators.

The Feds have good reason to be very upset with former DA Pirro. After all, she swindled the FBI into putting Nick and Darren Mazzarella, two multiple murderers, who were in federal custody, into the Witness Protection Program in exchange for Darren’s perjured testimony against Anthony DiSimone. Hopefully, they will diligently investigate not only her transgressions against them, but also her horrific prosecutorial misconduct against scores of innocent individuals, conduct, compared to which Michael Nifong was a “choirboy.”

It is understandable that Pirro has very likely already been indicted by sealed indictment, and that the Government is in no particular rush to reveal their hand to other possible targets by unsealing it. Still, for those who languish in prison cells, convicted of crimes they did not commit, and for those who have already done their ‘hard time’ and emerged, the announcement of Mrs. Pirro’s indictment cannot come soon enough. They know that 376 pages, and 52 boxes, of withheld and concealed Brady material was not the exception under DA Pirro, but the rule. Pirro and many of her top assistants, much like Nixon, Haldeman, Erlichman, and crew, simply did not play by the rules.

Given the existence of the Pirro tapes; numerous tapes; in the interest of Justice, the United States Attorney’s Office has a clear obligation to turn copies of them over to defense counsel whose clients are engaged in the appeals process, as relevant discovery, if called upon to do so. It is fair to say that Michael Garcia had no idea as to the scope and depth of the corruption and the injustice that would emerge in response to his ‘tip line,’ 1-877-363-4723. However, having secured additional staff, Mr. Garcia, must now proceed full throttle to aggressively apprehend and prosecute all who have committed crime, and, particularly those who have violated the civil rights of innocent individuals
under the color of law.

Jeanine Pirro, and her henchmen, and co-conspirators, must come to understand what Richard Nixon and his pack learned more than thirty years ago. No one is above the law!

Janet Difiore.

The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo Never Had A Chance

Must those still suffering under Pirro-Justice, both in and out of prison, continue to suffer until Jeanine Pirro’s Federal Indictment is announced?

When Charles Campbell, a man about whom a former employer once said affectionately, “Charlie was crazy like that; he would pick a fight with anyone over anything;” decided to pull into the parking lot of the Venice Deli late that afternoon in early October 1996, to run across the street to a pizza shop, that was really a front for a drug operation, the die was cast for a double tragedy. The first tragedy would occur within minutes. Campbell would be dead, the result of three bullets having pierced his heart.

Those “three shots to center mass,” as called for in the New York City Police Department Training Manual, had been fired by New York City Transit Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo, in response to Campbell’s beating of the officer’s unarmed father with a metal baseball bat, ironically using the service revolver of his grandfather, his father’s father, a Pleasantville Police Officer who had died in the line of duty more than fifty years earlier. The weapon, licensed to the elder DiGuglielmo, was kept under the deli counter for protection in the event of a robbery.

Campbell had insisted upon putting his latemodel Corvette directly in front of the deli, despite Officer DiGuglielmo’s middle-aged father’s request, because of a scarcity of spaces in front of the deli, that he park it in an open area of the lot while he did business across the street. The elder DiGuglielmo could not have imagined just how out of control Charles Campbell, an amateur boxer, and body builder, would become once he placed a “No Parking” sticker on the window of his Corvette, as he had been advised to do in such situations by the Dobbs Ferry Police.

Campbell, prompted by the pizza shop operator, came running across the street, fists flying, at the elder DiGuglielmo, a man with a serious heart condition. Not that it would likely have mattered; he was unaware that the older man’s son Richard, a police officer, and his son-in-law Bobby, a construction worker, were both inside the store, each having stopped by to lend a hand to the father, who was recovering from a recent hospitalization
for his heart. Richard ran out of the deli and, stepping between Campbell and his father, took several blows before he, his father and his brother-inlaw managed to wrestle the incredibly strong assailant to the ground.
Having subdued him and released him, the two younger men went back into the store to clean up, trusting that the incident was over and that Campbell would get in his car and drive off, leaving Richard’s father in the parking lot. As the elder man attempted to hand Campbell his cell phone that had been dropped in the scuffle, Campbell,
still enraged, went to the trunk of the Corvette and, removing a metal baseball bat, began swinging at Richard’s father. Looking back and seeing Campbell striking his father with the bat, and realizing the immediate danger of fatal injury his father faced, Officer DiGuglielmo reached for the gun kept beneath the counter and discharged his
sworn duty to save an innocent life.

No one could know, in that tragic moment, what is now known about DA Jeanine Pirro who, more than two years earlier, had let the confessed murderer of Louis Balancio, Nick Djonovic, escape from the country so that she could invent a more satisfactory, more Organized Crime-sounding perpetrator. No one could imagine that Pirro was about to play the “race card” and send a New York City Police Officer to prison for saving his father’s life from a bat wielding, enraged, body builder with an extensive criminal record.

No one could imagine she would succeed, given the fact that the killing was totally justifiable under two separate New York State statutes. First and foremost, DiGuglielmo was a police officer with a sworn duty to use deadly force to stop a perpetrator using deadly force against an unarmed innocent person. Secondly, even if he had been a civilian, he had the right under the Statute of Self-Defense, Defense of Others, to use deadly force against an assailant using deadly force against an innocent unarmed individual.

Perhaps that was why the jury that tried him, in the trial that never should have occurred, in fact, acquitted him of Intentional Murder, and acquitted him, his father, and his brother-in-law of Assault. But that didn’t stop DA Pirro, a district attorney who would ultimately conceal 376 pages and 52 boxes of exhibits, and numerous tape recordings, all exculpatory to Anthony DiSimone, all Brady material, in the Balancio murder case in order to achieve her self-promotional ends; from obtaining a murder conviction, even one for which there was no evidence, under the ‘turn-about’ theory of Depraved Indifference Murder.

After all, she had spent one whole year in a calculated effort to poison the jury pool, first claiming almost immediately that she had “thirteen witnesses who had heard racial epithets,” even though at trial she couldn’t produce one. To strengthen her lie, she brought in Al Sharpton, who, together with bused-in, paid demonstrators, picketed the DiGuglielmo’s deli every weekend for 52 weeks. Pirro wasn’t going to let a little thing like the truth
stand in her way when she could curry favor with minority voters right up to her fixed re-election bid in November 1997.

To be sure, she had help with her mindless, self-promotional agenda, not merely from corrupted high-level assistants like ADAs Patricia Murphy, Perry Perrone, Clem Patti, and Dobbs Ferry Police Chief George Longworth, but also from Judge Peter Leavitt, whose judicial incompetence was matched only by his obedience to Pirro’s dictates. Leavitt refused a Defense motion for change of venue despite 52 weeks of constant Prosecution media propaganda and jury pool poisoning. He insisted upon using the standard voir dire questionnaire despite the special circumstances attached to a defendant who was a police officer, not to mention a full year of publicity. He delivered a totally flawed instruction to the jury with regard to Justifiable Homicide under the Statute of Self-Defense, Defense of Others. He would not permit the introduction of any evidence regarding Charles Campbell’s long history of arrests, several of which were for violent crimes.

However, despite all of the restrictions and handicaps he imposed on the Defense, Leavitt permitted the Prosecution, once realizing they would not get an Intentional Murder conviction, to change direction 180 degrees,
very late, and argue for Depraved Indifference Murder. What was indifferent about three shots through the heart at close range?

Truth be told, it was never about race. That was a Pirro lie like so many of her lies. Mr. and Mrs. Balancio will both go to their graves insisting that their son Louis was killed by Anthony DiSimone despite a mountain of
evidence that it was Nick Djonovic. Jing Kelly has been kept from her son Tristram, now seven years old, for five years because of Pirro lies. Jeffrey Deskovic spent nearly seven more years in prison than necessary because
of repeated Pirro lies and cruelty.

Richard DiGuglielmo, former New York City Transit Police Officer, has lived in general population, in the State Prison System for more than 10 years, by choice. His fellow inmates, most of whom are people of color,
know who he is. They know he is no racist. For twelve years on the job as a police officer, he was, and still is, a ‘regular guy.’

If Charles Campbell had been White, and was assailing Richard’s father, having broken his hand and severely injured his leg with a metal baseball bat, and was swinging for his head, as originally described by three eyewitnesses, he would be just as dead, only Officer Richard DiGuglielmo would not be in prison for these last ten years. He would never have been charged with Murder in the first place.

The only racist in the equation was Jeanine Pirro who, not only played the “race card”, but years later, in her failed book, spoke of Campbell’s “swagger” and “entitlement,” as though she was present at the incident, as
she continued to defame Officer DiGuglielmo and his family for having saved his father’s life.

What other choice did Officer DiGuglielmo have under the circumstances? Should he have permitted Charles Campbell to “crush his father’s head like a watermelon” as one eyewitness originally stated he was trying to
do? Given the fury with which he had already broken his father’s hand and severely injured his leg with a swing the impact of which another eyewitness had said “could be heard a block away,” should Richard DiGuglielmo
have allowed Campbell to kill his father?

The simple truth is that Richard DiGuglielmo has already done ten years in state prison, and is facing another ten before he can even be considered for parole because he did the right thing! He did the thing he had a sworn duty to do, the only thing any right-minded individual would do under the same circumstances. That was why, immediately following the shooting, eyewitnesses declared, “It was self-defense.” Those eyewitnesses were right, too right for DA Pirro and her self-serving need to turn the incident, already tragic enough, into something it wasn’t.

For many days following the shooting, witnesses, whose original statements did not please the District Attorney, were hounded and harassed, at home and on the job, at all hours, by the Dobbs Ferry Police, who, ultimately
wore them down, and pushed them into signing statements more in keeping with what Jeanine Pirro wanted.

She had done the same to more than two dozen witnesses in the Balancio case for years, as we now know from the incredibly vast amount of Brady material her office kept hidden for 13 years. In the process, she succeeded
in convicting Anthony DiSimone, keeping him in prison for seven of those years for a crime she and her top ADAs knew, very well, had been committed, and confessed to, by Nick Djonovic.

Must those still suffering under Pirro-Justice, both in and out of prison, continue to suffer until Jeanine Pirro’s Federal Indictment is finally announced? How long must it take before State and Federal Courts in New
York open their eyes to the fact that what she did to Anthony DiSimone, she also did to Richard DiGuglielmo, Jing Kelly, Steven Nowicki, Marci Stein, Selwyn Days, and countless other victims of her self-promotional
prosecutorial misconduct? Surely, justice delayed has been justice denied; and that’s the second tragedy.