Archive for June 8th, 2016

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#30 in a series)

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

I’ve written previously about the growing scandal involving New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his fund raising.

Latest, and semi-breaking news: two more people have been arrested and charged with fraud.

One of them is a “hedge-fund financier”.

The other one? Norman Seabrook, also known as the head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. The COBA is the union that represents New York City’s corrections officers (about 9,000 members).

But wait! It gets better! One of the people the feds have targeted is now a cooperating witness!

The charges, brought by prosecutors in the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, involve Mr. Seabrook’s investment of $20 million from his union and its annuity fund in Platinum Partners through Mr. Huberfeld [the hedge-fund guy – DB], and Mr. Huberfeld’s payment of a kickback to the union leader, according to the criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday morning.

More:

Mr. Rechnitz [the cooperating witness – DB] delivered the payoff to the union leader in an $820 Ferragamo bag bought specifically for that purpose. He laid out the cash, according to the complaint, and was repaid by Platinum through a scheme that disguised the reimbursement as payment for Knicks tickets — two $3,750 seats at eight games.

It amuses me enormously that they had to buy a designer bag specifically for their payoffs. Also, the Knicks tickets must have been a major clue: who’s going to pay $7,500 to watch the hapless Knickerbockers play?

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Annals of law (#10 in a series)

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

Two sort of random notes:

1. Jana Duty, the elected district attorney of Williamson County (Williamson County is just up the road from Austin/Travis County: it covers Round Rock and Georgetown) has been placed “on probation” by the State Bar of Texas for 18 months.

Duty will still be able to practice law but will have to comply with the terms of her probation.

Why? “Professional misconduct”. Specifically, Ms. Duty was accused of withholding evidence in a murder case.

“It is unknown to the court why Ms. Duty intentionally and willfully withheld the means to view time stamps on the Walmart Surveillance video other than from Ms. Duty’s statement that “(defense counsel) acted so horribly to me during the first trial, that I just — I didn’t want to speak to them,’” the court document said.

Here’s the Wilco DA’s website. I find that quote from Article 2.01 deeply ironic.

2. On Monday, a judge for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that Sonia Cacy was innocent of murder.

Ms. Cacy was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1993: she allegedly doused her uncle with “an accelerant” and set him on fire.

Except there were problems with the evidence.

During at punishment retrial in 1996, her new attorney enlisted Dr. Gerald Hurst, the late Cambridge-educated chemist from Austin, to evaluate the forensic evidence that clinched conviction against her. Hurst discovered that the original tests, conducted by Joe Castorena of the Bexar County Forensics Lab, had been completely misread. The results didn’t find the indicators of an accelerant as he claimed. Castorena, a toxicologist by training, had in fact identified the products of pyrolysis—compounds created by burning plastic, which in many ways are similar to those of an accelerant.

Lots of problems:

…Castorena, the toxicologist, admitted in a letter to her [Cacy’s – DB] counsel, Dallas lawyer Gary Udashen, that the clothing samples he’d tested had been contaminated in either the morgue or the lab. Thus, his baffling reasoning went, anyone who didn’t know about the contamination couldn’t accurately interpret the results. Asked why he never reported this, Castorena replied, “nobody asked me.”

The full court has to concur before Ms. Cacy is officially exonerated, but as the TM article notes, that almost seems to be a formality now.

Posted in Law, Politics, WCDA, WillCo | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 8, 2016.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

The LAT is reporting the death of actress Theresa Saldana.

She was in “Raging Bull” (which, oddly enough, I have never gotten around to watching) and the 90’s TV series “The Commish”.

It makes me feel weird to say this, but: she was perhaps best known as the victim of a vicious attack by a deranged stalker in 1982. She was stabbed 10 times before a passerby pulled the guy off her. I don’t want to say this was the first celebrity stalking attack, because I’m sure someone will prove me wrong: but it was one of the earliest I can remember, and one of the first to draw public attention. (Ms. Saldana played herself in “Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story”, the movie based on her case.)

[Arthur R.] Jackson [the deranged stalker – DB] was convicted of attempted murder and held in California state prison until being released in 1996 and deported to the U.K., where he was committed in 1997 to a psychiatric institution after pleading guilty to killing a man 30 years earlier. Jackson died in 2004.

Posted in Law, Movies, TV | Comments Closed

The paper of record.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

Two interesting bits from the NYT:

1. I noticed this yesterday, and Lawrence emailed me about it as well: Rudolph Stocker retired from the Times on May 18th at the age of 78.

Who?

Rudolph Stocker was the last printer at The Times working under a guaranteed lifetime contract; the last Times employee who knew how to operate a Linotype casting machine; the last journeyman of the old International Typographical Union and its New York local, No. 6, a bargaining unit that was once so powerful and important that everyone in the newspaper business knew it simply as “Big Six.”

When the Times went over to computer typesetting, part of their agreement with the union guaranteed job security to the existing printers (“…1,785 situation-holders and full-time substitutes, 810 of whom were at The Times”).

Did he sit on his butt after the paper phased out the Linotype?

“Rudy was an expert proofreader,” his colleague Barbara Natusch recalled, “and transferred his skills from operating a Linotype machine to producing ads for the paper on a Mac, using InDesign and Photoshop.”

Sounds like a hell of a guy. I hope he has a happy retirement.

Through his colleagues, he made it known that he was not interested in a valedictory interview.

2. The Times Insider talks about the process of getting Ali’s obit into the paper, including a literal “stop the presses”.

It’s always kind of nice to know these people are human, too:

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking,” Mr. Coffey said, imitating Lloyd Bridges in the disaster spoof “Airplane!”

Posted in Clippings, Media | Comments Closed