By Jeffrey Page

When I was a reporter for the Times Herald-Record during the Seventies, I covered the Sullivan County Courthouse where I met Judge Louis B. Scheinman, a former district attorney, who brooked no nonsense either as prosecutor or as jurist.

Scheinman was a political realist who understood that district attorneys must show the public a stack of successful prosecutions if they hope to get re-elected. He also was convinced of something more important. The D.A.’s real job – in fact, his single most important responsibility to the law-abiding public – is to seek justice. This far outweighs waving lists of convictions and reciting excuses for acquittals.

There are some prosecutors at work today who could stand a few lessons in this uncomplicated, but apparently elusive doctrine.

Take the case of Lebrew Jones, 52, currently and for the last 22 years, a New York inmate, housed nowadays at the state prison in Otisville. Jones was convicted of the brutal killing of a woman in New York City and sent away for 22 years to life. Several people, including the victim’s mother, don’t believe he’s guilty.

Of course such beliefs are not proofs. And so, as Jones goes before the parole board his week, his lawyers try to win a reversal of his conviction.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

For one thing, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has rejected a request by Jones’s lawyers to provide them with important evidentiary material about his case. This forces the lawyers to file motions in court to get these papers and adds more time to Jones’s ordeal. Why would the D.A.’s office withhold this information? Because, as the Record reported in a stunning story over the weekend, the material was provided to Jones’s original trial lawyer and he no longer has it.

Read that again. The man’s been in jail for 42 percent of his life – he has no other criminal record – but the Manhattan D.A. won’t hand over a second copy of paperwork that might be key to proving Jones’s innocence. The prosecutor declines to seek justice for Jones after two decades in prison. Which leads to an important question. What is Robert Morganthau afraid of? Running up a high Xerox bill? What could be the real reason for this in-your-face refusal?

It’s important to note that it was after the Times Herald-Record began looking into Jones’s conviction that Morganthau’s office launched a new investigation of it. That was two years ago. The office has yet to finish this examination of a case in which it played a prominent role, the Record reported on Sunday. They don’t seem to move fast at the Manhattan D.A.’s office, do they? But hey, it’s nothing serious – just two more years out of the life of a man who might be innocent.
The case against Lebrew Jones was full of holes. The Record’s story noted that nothing in the glut of evidence at the crime scene connected Jones to the killing. No medical examiner went to the scene.

One of the pieces of evidence against Jones was his often conflicting statements made during a 20-hour grilling. It turns out that Jones, described by the Record as “intellectually challenged,” at one point suggested that the woman killed herself by pounding her own skull with a rock. He renounced his speculation later but this self-pounding story remained part of the record. Did you ever try to make sense after sitting up for 20 hours?

The district attorney’s refusal to provide Jones’s lawyers with the paperwork they need – because he gave a copy to a previous lawyer – is not part of the pursuit of justice. I wonder how Judge Scheinman would describe the prosecutor’s actions in light of his inability to suffer fools well.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

We need a new State Senate, and we need 62 principled Conservatives, Liberals, Libertarians, Working Family party members and independents to make it work. Democrats and Republicans need not apply, having proved themselves not up to the task.

Never again can we allow a gaggle of quacking Republicans and Democrats to conduct a public temper tantrum as they did in Albany – all in the name of “reform.” That display, which lasted a month, was no more about “reform” than it was about ice hockey. It was about the exercise of political power and we all suffered for it. Important recurring bills, such as renewal of state permission to impose local sales taxes, were not acted on in a timely manner. Additionally, the future of mayoral control of the New York City Board of Education seems to be up in the air.

The issue of gay marriage seems to be a casualty of the impasse. Think about that: A measure to grant equal rights to a segment of the population – whether you support it or oppose it – is a casualty of the so-called fight for “reform.” 

We witnessed Governor Paterson legally issuing order after order for the Senate to convene, resolve its differences, and work for the people. And we witnessed the 62 senators telling the governor to butt out. The senators gaveled themselves to order and then adjourned. That’s not “reform.” That’s lawlessness. That’s the Gang of 62 informing the people they represent, “You’re dismayed? Let us tell where you can stick your dismay.”

Reform. What a joke. In the end, the not-especially-principled Democrats were so happy to get their majority back that they made Pedro Espada Jr. their majority leader. Of course, it was Espada’s jump to the Republicans a month ago that precipitated this sudden push for “reform” in the first place. How nice that Espada has a title. He’s happy. The Democrats are happy. The Republicans have to live with it. But there’s another group, hasn’t been consulted.

No one asked New Yorkers – the real ones, the people who struggle to pay taxes so that members of the State Senate can draw a salary – how we feel about Espada’s being in a position of power. We weren’t asked because, let’s face it, no one gives a damn what we think.

Senator Bill Larkin, the Republican from Cornwall-on-Hudson, handed The Times Herald-Record one of the great straight lines in the history of standup comedy.

“Almost certainly, we should have done this before,” he said about the push for “reform.”

If by “we,” he means the Republicans, it’s amusing to note that until Jan. 1, the Republicans controlled the Senate for 40 years.

If by “we,” he meant the entire Senate, it’s amusing to note that Larkin has been a member for 18 years.

We should have done this before? We should have done what before? Quick, can anyone name the card-carrying Democrat or Republican who ever made serious noise about “reform” of the State Senate?

There exists a path to real reform, but it takes a raging fury to carry it out. It takes determination. It takes an unwillingness to be played for the fool any longer. Most of all, it takes an understanding that such reform won’t happen quickly but could take years.

It won’t be easy to ignore the Gang of 62 when they start littering our mailboxes with campaign crap next year, but we can do it. It takes the time to sit down and inform these incumbent characters precisely why they won’t get our votes. It takes a clean sweep.

The Senate won’t be spotless after one election. But let 2010 be the start.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

So Palin leaves when she ought to stay, and Sanford stays when he ought to leave.

In Alaska, Sarah Palin said she would quit the governor’s job in one month. This so she can be free to travel and presumably light the spark under her corner – it’s not actually a wing, is it? – of the GOP. She didn’t exactly say she would stump the nation in preparation for a 2012 presidential run. She didn’t exactly say anything else either.

Instead, during her not-quite-coherent announcement and a subsequent entry on her facebook page, she chanted familiar lines – “I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint” – but didn’t offer a single suggestion for, say, ensuring greater energy independence. This omission from the governor of oil-sodden Alaska. 

She scolded the press and the Establishment. “How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country,” Palin said. In other words, only she – and not all those suspicious reporters, editors, elected officeholders and appointed officials in Washington – knows what “it’s about country” means because, she suggested, she’s the only real patriot.

But she failed to address an obvious question: If resigning as governor in the middle of your first term is “about country,” what about Alaska, the state that trusted her to do a job?

If Palin quit to get a jump on going after the 2012 nomination, she’ll have a problem with voters, who actually expect governors and other elected officials to carry out their part of the bargain and finish their terms of office. It would have been difficult enough for her to run as a one-term governor from a small state. Now she opens herself to the derisive charge that she’s a half-term governor.

And just think, Sarah Palin, who quits when the spirit moves her, could have been that heartbeat away from an Oval Office occupied by a man in his 70s.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Governor Love says he’s staying put. That would be Mark Sanford, whose story of the heart is known to everyone who can read a headline or watch a newscast.

You know this sordid jumble. He went missing. Then his staff said he was on the Appalachian Trail trying to clear his head. But he was really in Argentina, having a week with his “soul mate.” Then he returned and was trying to learn to love his wife all over again. Then he quit as head of the GOP governors association. He might have been a candidate for president in 2012 and on and on.

In any case, he’s staying on as governor even as Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, Whigs and Tories, Socialists and anarchists, agnostics and saints, church people, unchurched people, ice cream salesmen, farmers, chicken pluckers and minor league ballplayers ask – demand, actually – that Sanford take his apologies, his heavy heart and his Peyton Place life and go elsewhere.

Such as Bosnia or Nepal. Or at least over the state line into North Carolina.
 
Not the Honorable Mark Sanford. After disgracing himself, humiliating his wife, exposing his lover, embarrassing his four children, and playing the fool before 4.5 million South Carolinians, Sanford decided to stand on principle.

He won’t go, he says, because he was elected to do a job for the people though lately he’s doing a job on the people.

In Palin and Sanford we have a pair of pols who don’t know when to stay and when to go. Here’s how to figure it out. If you haven’t been indicted and you’re still breathing you stay. If the people, especially if led by those of your own party, say it’s time to go, recite a nice speech and vanish.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

The little section of New York known as the State Senate has taken on the trappings of a zoo with all the noise and stink that the inhabitants of zoos generate. Specifically, as the Senate’s Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals go at one another, they are, by extension, going at the people they’re supposed to represent. That would be you, me and the guy who lives just down the street.

And so, while the Senate boys and girls do battle over the political matter of which party will set the agenda and pound the gavel, the business of the people is dead in the water. At risk, as I write this, are the future of county sales taxes, the New York City Board of Education, and numerous other matters that must be extended by Tuesday the 30th if they are to survive. These are no small deals. If a county, such as Orange, loses its authority to collect sales tax, guess whose property tax could rise to make up for lost revenues.

The senators even gave a (figurative) middle finger to Governor Paterson several times last week when he ordered them to convene and behave like the mature public servants they pretend to be. The Democrats met and adjourned a minute later – after courageously voting to officially mourn the death of Michael Jackson. The Republicans’ session lasted about as long.

Paterson, outraged, ordered a stop to the senators’ per diem payments and travel reimbursements, and asked the comptroller to withhold their paychecks. The test of the governor’s anger will come when all this is over and the senators ask for their back pay. Won’t it be instructive if Paterson stands his ground and tells them that they forfeited their pay when they decided to play partisan games on the people’s time?

The situation in Albany has gotten so bizarre that Friday’s Times-Union took note of a Democratic senator’s unhappiness with Paterson’s actions. Translation: Paterson’s standing with the public, which has been in the tank for months, may be improving, but senators of his own party still could make life difficult for him because he insisted that the Senate meet and actually do a little work.

If you’re sickened by the action, or inaction, in Albany, just think. In another 17 months these distinguished gentlemen and ladies will be asking you to return them to office for another term. They may be waiting for 2010 to tell you what a great job they do for the people, but the people can tell them right now that the 19,004,911 New Yorkers who happen not to be members of the Senate are outraged.

Surely your state senator is concerned about your thoughts on this matter and would love to hear from you. Here are some handy phone numbers for the three senators who represent Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties:

John J. Bonacic, 42nd District: Middletown office, 344-3311. Bonacic represents the Orange County towns of Deer Park, Greenville, Minisink, Mount Hope, and Wawayanda; all of Sullivan  County, and the Ulster County towns of Denning Gardiner, Hardenburgh, Hurley, Kingston, Marbletown, New Paltz, Olive, Rochester, Rosendale, Saugerties, Shandaken, Shawangunk, Ulster, Wawarsing, and Woodstock.

William J. Larkin, 39th District: New Windsor office, 567-1270. Larkin represents the Orange County towns of Blooming Grove, Chester, Cornwall, Crawford Goshen Hamptonburgh, Highlands, Monroe, Montgomery, New Windsor, Newburgh, Wallkill, Woodbury; city of Newburgh, and the Ulster County towns of Esopus, Lloyd, Marlborough, Plattekill, and the city of Kingston.

Thomas P. Morahan, 38th District: Nanuet office, 425-1818. Morahan represents the Orange County towns of Tuxedo and Warwick, and all of Rockland County.

The State Senate may not mean business these days, but its 62 members need to be told that the people mean nothing less than business.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

 In 2007, 12,998 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes in the United States. Nearly 400 were New Yorkers – possibly our friends, our children, our parents, our neighbors.

 Thinking about so many dead can be a difficult abstraction. But they come into focus when you realize they were a population equal to Port Jervis, Woodridge, Walker Valley, Forestburgh and the village of Florida combined.

The greatest atrocities drunken drivers perpetrate on us of course are the bloodshed and misery, and the widows and orphans they create. The randomness of their criminal acts – you could be watering your garden when some drunk runs you down – is terrifying.

Sometimes we’re subjected to additional outrages by judges who pass sentence.

And so we come to the case of Mario Reyes, 59, who was walking to catch a bus home after a night’s work at a shipping company in Miami. It was 7 a.m. when Mr. Reyes had the bad luck to encounter Donte’ Stallworth who drove up in his Bentley.

Mr. Reyes is now dead.

It was time for justice, but justice often is elusive when a case involves one person who is bathed in shiny celebrity and the other in pallid anonymity. Donte’ Stallworth is a (suspended for now) $5 million wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns. Mr. Reyes was a crane operator who likely will soon be forgotten by all but his family and friends.

Stallworth’s blood alcohol concentration at the time he killed Mr. Reyes was 0.126. In Florida, the presumption of drunkenness is reached at 0.08. This doesn’t mean you’re sober at 0.08. It’s just the legal limit. In fact, a 180-pound man who drinks two martinis in an hour will have a BAC of about 0.103.

Stallworth faced 15 years in prison for killing Mr. Reyes.

He was sentenced to 30 days by a judge newly arrived from the planet Neptune.

Thirty days for killing a man going home after a night’s work is not a sentence. It’s a minor inconvenience. To Stallworth, 28, it means he won’t be able to take in a movie, go to a ball game, have dinner out, or stop in for a drink for a whole 720 hours. To the rest of us, it’s yet another atrocity.

Additionally, Judge Dennis Murphy gave Stallworth two years of house arrest and eight years of probation. Not so severe when he could have sent Stallworth away until the age of 43.

Murphy also noted that Stallworth had agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the Reyes family. That’s very nice, but it seems to ignore the fact that the prosecution was not in the name of the Reyes family but in the name of the people of the State of Florida, all of whom need protection from the likes of Donte’ Stallworth. The sentence also forces you to wonder what would have happened to Stallworth if he were not a rich man.

The judge then ordered Stallworth to make a $2,500 contribution to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and it is MADD that comes out of this tragedy with its head highest. MADD essentially told Stallworth and Murphy where to stick the $2,500.

“If we took the settlement, we’d be part of the settlement and we don’t agree with the sentence and therefore the settlement,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, the president of MADD.

The sentencing of people who kill with a bottle and a car shouldn’t be a joke.

Here in the Hudson Valley, a 21-year old man from New York City got two years in prison for killing a pedestrian. A man from Shadaken got one to three years for killing a man while driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.11. And in Sullivan County, a man with two previous DWI arrests on his record drew four to eight years for killing a popular 17-year old student. Two years? Three years? Four to eight? Are they the value of a human life?

Of course not, but 30 days is grotesque.

We need a law: Drink, drive, and kill? Fifteen years.

Next case.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

 Eddie Ryan – Sergeant, U.S.M.C. – wasn’t wounded in Iraq by enemy gunfire or a roadside bomb but by that oxymoronic monster – friendly fire. He suffered terrible head wounds. It was during his second tour of duty in the Middle East. And now, the Marines want to kick him out.

 Six years after he was wounded, Sgt. Ryan is still relearning how to do things most of us take for granted, such as walking.

 But after giving so much to the nation, Sgt. Ryan, 25, of Ellenville, recently received a letter from the Department of the Navy informing him that he was being mustered out. In the words of some dithering half-wit in the Navy Department, he was told he’s out because he had been found “incompetent” and “unemployable.” This to a man who has been in and out of hospitals for six years, about one quarter of his life.

 Sgt. Ryan says he still has something to offer. “I’m working hard every day. I’m working on my legs,” he told The Times Herald-Record last month. “My Marines need me. I want to serve.”

 Maybe Sgt. Ryan isn’t ready to carry a rifle right now. But “incompetent” for suffering wounds accidentally inflicted by his comrades? Absolutely not. This man’s courage, pluck, and determination could inspire other wounded soldiers. He’s just a wounded Marine who needs more time to recover.

 No rational person can describe Sgt. Eddie Ryan as incompetent, and for some Navy desk jockey to address him that way in the chill of an official letter is obscene. But since the Navy Department is tossing an incendiary word like “incompetent” in the direction of Ellenville, it behooves Americans to consider the competence – or serious lack thereof – of some of the people in our wartime government over the last decade.

 Competence? There were the hucksters in the Bush administration who sold America a bill of goods about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. You remember, the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they knew Hussein possessed even if none was ever found.

 How about all the Bushies who were never able to answer this uncomplicated question: If Hussein had such weapons, why didn’t he use them against foreign troops landing on his soil?

 What about then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assuring President Bush that the war wouldn’t cost a dime because Iraq’s oil reserves would pay for it?

 Recall Rumsfeld’s response to a soldier in Kuwait who asked why the troops had to dig through landfills for scrap metal to fashion into armor for their vehicles. Rumsfeld’s hapless response: “As you know, ah, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

 And how about Dick Cheney assuring the nation that the end of the war was near at hand? Of America’s adversaries he said: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” That was May 30, 2005.

 Competence? There’s the Einstein at the Government Printing Office who recently placed a report on non-military nuclear facilities in the United States on the internet. This catalogue contained handy little maps to show precisely where weapons-grade nuclear material is kept. This sounds like delicious information for a terrorist, but one former head of the CIA said: “These screw-ups happen.” There’ve been others?

 There’s the case of  Vice President Joe Biden – first in the line of presidential succession – revealing that Dick Cheney’s “secure location” after the attacks of 9/11 was in the basement of the Naval Observatory. Cheney’s hideout was always good for a laugh, but the observatory is the official residence of the VP – making it Biden’s new home and his own “secure location” in case of danger.

 As you know, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – second in the line of presidential succession – may now be working on her 37th revision of her charge that the CIA lied to her about the use of torture. Or is it the 47th? One of these days she’s bound to come up with her final version.

 These are some of the people who’ve demonstrated their levels of competence. Not much, right? Yet with the exception of Rumsfeld, they served out their time in the Bush administration and are getting off to a rousing start in President Obama’s administration. And all the while, Sgt. Eddie Ryan, U.S.M.C., gets booted out of the Corps and remains in Ellenville working hard to get back to his men.

 Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

By rights, the boy should have had a big chocolate cake and some candles to blow out. He should have gotten a shiny new bike, maybe a Whiffle ball set.

Some ancient uncle should have asked the usual goofy questions like “Are you looking forward to going to school?” because, had things been different, he would have been entering kindergarten in September.

That cake and party should have been held last month, five years after the child was born and five years after he was murdered.

With no name, no family and no history, he floated ashore in Middletown, N.J. on one of those brutal March days when the wind comes off Raritan Bay like a punishment. He was found by a man out for a walk at a place called Ideal Beach. The boy was naked. His umbilical cord was still attached even after about a week in the water.

There had been no reports of missing newborns.

A post mortem would reveal two skull fractures that could have been caused by his striking something in the water or, more likely, by some lunatic burdened with this inconvenient infant. An assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County said it was likely that the baby had been tossed into the bay alive.

The discovery of this boy came during an epidemic of infanticide in New Jersey. In 1997, a young woman gave birth at her prom, drowned the baby in the toilet, stopped for some salad at the snack table and went back to the dance. In 2000, a woman threw her 15-month old son into the Passaic River because she couldn’t find a babysitter. In 2005, a man beat his year-old son to death because the boy had played with the TV remote. And of course in 1996 the infamous young couple from Bergen County, Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, went to prison in Delaware for killing the infant son she had just borne in a motel. There were others.

Each of the states, starting with Texas in 1999, has enacted a Safe Haven law that, with some variation in details, allow people to surrender unwanted infants at hospitals, fire houses and police stations. No questions asked unless the baby shows signs of physical abuse. Nebraska’s law was badly written, with no age requirements, and as a result some people dropped off their teenage sons and daughters – clearly not the idea behind Safe Haven. That law has been fixed.

Critics object to Safe Haven laws because they think it encourages parents to give up their children.

But in fact every legal surrender results in one infant not being left out in the cold, or being put out in the garbage, or getting dropped into the fearful waters of Raritan Bay. If anything, the law needs greater public awareness.

Tim Jaccard, the founder of the Long Island-based AMT Children of Hope Foundation and an outspoken supporter of Safe Haven laws, said that 220 babies have been legally abandoned in New York since 2000. During the same period 22 babies were improperly surrendered: Only eight of them were found alive. He estimated that 1,826 children have been legally surrendered nationwide since 1999.

In New Jersey, the Department of Children and Families reports that in the last eight years, 38 Safe Haven surrenders had been made. Of course, no one can say what would have happened to those children if there were no such law. But what really matters is that 38 kids are alive today. In the same span, another 28 children in New Jersey were involved in “unsafe surrenders,” which is sterilized bureaucratese for babies found dead or critically injured.

Some months after the little boy washed up at Ideal Beach, a funeral was held for him at St. Anne’s Cemetery in Wall Township. Attending were a gravedigger, a man from a funeral home, a priest, a reporter and a photographer. The cemetery donated a gravesite in a section reserved for babies and children. The undertaker provided a tiny casket and some white carnations and purple delphiniums.

The priest decided that the baby would be called John. Then, as the gravedigger lay down on the ground to lower the little casket into the earth, the priest prayed.

He prayed that John had deserved the dignity due all people; surely he knew John deserved such respect. He implored God to bless the grave and to take John into his presence. He referred to John as “our child” and asked God to grant John eternal happiness.

Now, five years later, John’s killer remains free.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com