<< back to history

Hynes is not the man to clean up Brooklyn’s troubled courts

May 5, 2003 - BROOKLYN PAPERS

As Brooklyn’s latest courthouse corruption scandal exploded this week, District Attorney Charles Hynes appeared shocked — shocked! — that bribery was allegedly committed on his watch, and he suggested there is something inherently wrong with the buying and selling of judgeships as well as judgements.

Justice should be blind; a district attorney, however, may not be blind to injustice and judicial corruption. Hynes, nursed at the bosom of the Brooklyn Democratic machine, is, in this case, friends with all the wrong people.

Whatever his public pronouncements now, Hynes’ decades-old allegiance to the sources of our judiciary’s dark days will taint his actions. Every prosecution he brings can appear to be both a cover for the prosecutions he will not bring and a reminder of those he did not bring before.

In the interest of blind justice, Hynes should recuse himself as prosecutor of Brooklyn’s judicial mess. A special federal prosecutor should take his place.

The fruit of a poisoned tree

In the legal trade it’s called “fruit of a poisoned tree.”

That’s the term lawyers use to argue that valid evidence obtained improperly not be admitted at trial. With the arrest this week of Judge Gerald Garson, a longtime treasurer of the Kings County Democratic Committee, and the declaration by District Attorney Charles Hynes that the system used to select Brooklyn judges is a sham, all of Brooklyn’s judges — and Hynes himself — must be considered such fruit.

The poisoned tree, of course, is the county Democratic Party and its judicial screening process. At the tree’s root is party leader Clarence Norman and his chief executive Jeffrey Feldman. The tree holds Hynes as well.

After nearly two years of judicial corruption staring him in the face, Hynes, forced to confront strong evidence in the Garson case, deflected attention from individual judges who might be engaged in improprieties (the tree’s fruit) and targeted the tree itself.

“Any suggestion this is a process giving voting rights to the public is nothing less than a sham,” Hynes said. He empaneled a grand jury to investigate how the borough’s judges are selected.

Hynes may be well intentioned here. But his close ties to the Brooklyn Democrats, especially Norman, Feldman and former Borough President Howard Golden (a longtime party leader to whom Hynes provided a six-figure, do-nothing job after Golden was term-limited out of office), combined with Hynes’ failure to address the problem sooner, make him the wrong man for this task.

Hynes has for his entire political career had no qualms with the way judges are hand-picked by the county organization. Now, after more than a dozen years as district attorney, we are asked to believe that he’s found religion.

• • •

Charles Hynes, the great court reformer. Imagine!

Consider the case of Supreme Court Justice Victor Barron, who last year was caught shaking down an attorney. The court scandal did not begin with Barron, and we see that it didn’t end with him. Yet Hynes declined at the time — in the face of a constant barrage of criticism by reformers and editorial writers at the Daily News — to widen his probe.

“It’s overstated, without a scintilla of evidence, that this is an endemic problem,” Hynes said then. “I don’t believe it. Not here in this county or any other county.”

By all appearances, Hynes had an airtight case against Barron. Following Barron’s arraignment, the DA told reporters that he had marked money that was exchanged between the crooked judge and the attorney, who was cooperating with investigators. He also had an incriminating recording of Barron accepting the cash.

According to a Brooklyn Papers source, Barron’s best defense would have been to put the whole system on trial.

“The only thing you could do for Barron is to show the jury the corruption of the courthouse and show that Barron is a fall guy,” the source said.

Hynes let Barron cop a plea deal, avoiding a trial that would likely have gone far to expose the system of corruption in Brooklyn’s courts. That was less than a year ago. Why should we trust Hynes not to sweep the whole mess under the rug this time?

It would be welcome news, but incredibly hard to believe, that Hynes is ready to burn all his political bridges.

• • •

Hynes can contribute to the restoration of public respect for the judiciary and the rule of law in Brooklyn by acknowledging his inherent conflicts of interest in these cases and recusing himself from their investigation and prosecution. If he fails to act with honor in this, the public will be justified in wondering, with each conviction Hynes extracts, how many others were dealt with among friends.

A special federal prosecutor with no ties to the Kings County Democratic Committee should head these investigations and present evidence to a grand jury. Even Brooklynites have a right to justice.

<< back to history