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/The Advocate.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

DA DiFiore Attempts, Once Again,
To Preserve A Wrongful Conviction
Fires Off Appeal Within 24 Hours Of Bellantoni’s DiGuglielmo Decision

On Sept. 19, 2008, within one day of the issuance of Judge Rory J. Bellantoni’s decision freeing Richard DiGuglielmo, District Attorney
Janet DiFiore filed a Notice of Appeal with the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, as well as an Affirmation, a Memorandum of Law, and an Order To Show Cause, in contemplation of action by that Court, prepared by Assistant District Attorney Robert K. Sauer. Mr. Sauer, together with ADA Timothy Ward, had represented the District Attorney’s Office at the, frequently combative, eight-day evidentiary hearing, that developed from the 440.10 Motion submitted by DiGuglielmo.

Richard DiGuglielmo was a New York City Transit Police Offi-cer with 12 years on the job when a violent incident occurred in the parking lot of his family’s Dobbs Ferry deli, October 3, 1996; an incident that would involve a batwielding assailant, who, after severely injuring the officer’s father’s hand and leg, was shot and killed while attempting to strike the father’s head.

At the time of the incident, there were three, and only three, eyewitnesses who saw the incident unfold, including the firing of three shots
by Officer DiGuglielmo as Charles Campbell was swinging at the of-ficer’s middle-aged father’s head with a metal baseball bat. Each of the three eyewitnesses had initially reported to the Dobbs Ferry Police that Of-ficer DiGuglielmo’s firing of three shots at Campbell was in self-defense
because, as one of them stated, Campbell would have “crushed his (the elder DiGuglielmo’s) head like a watermelon.”

The 440.10 Motion was brought about by the discovery that, although at the grand jury, and at trial, the key prosecution witness, Michael Dillon, had testi-fied with statements that supported the Prosecution’s position that the shooting was a bias crime, and, that there was no immediate threat to the life or safety of the elder DiGuglielmo from the bat-toting Charles Campbell, there had been no fewer than 4 statements elicited
from him by Dobbs Ferry Police in their coercive effort by harassment and intimidation to get him to come off his original account of self-defense.

In the course of the hearings, another of the eyewitnesses, Jimmy White, who also had undergone similar treatment by the Dobbs Ferry Police, but who never changed his account, came forward to describe, for Bellantoni’s Court, the coercive tactics employed by Dobbs Ferry Police Chief George Longworth and his threeman detective bureau. Testimony by Detective Guarneri, and then lead prosecutor, high-ranking Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy, was “not credible”, and was inneffectual in countering either Dillon or White’s testimony, particularly with regard to their repeated nightly ordeal at the hands of Dobbs Ferry Police between October 3 and October 8, 1996.

Those familiar with Mr. Sauer’s work will recognize the cynicism and distortion of fact so often employed in his appellate presentations. His reference to “a long line of disputes initiated by the Defendant’s father, the deli’s propieter, due to his bizzare obsession over the parking spaces in his lot,” neglects the truth; firstly, that the elder DiGulielmo had merely placed a sticker on Charles Campbell’s car window, as instructed to by Dobbs Ferry Police and, secondly, that it was Campbell who came running across the street, fists flying, to punish him for doing so.

Sauer speaks of, “The jury, having rejected his (DiGuglielmo’s) Justification Defense on the bases of the testimony of sixteen eyewitnesses to all or parts of the events, nine of whom saw the actual shooting, and testified that the victim, while holding a baseball bat when he was shot, was, in fact, in a defensive posture and not swinging the bat when the Defendant fired his weapon.” The bullet entry wounds clearly suggested otherwise.

It is astounding the lengths the Westchester District Attorney’s Office has been willing to go to, both under Jeanine Pirro and Janet DiFiore, to protect and preserve wrongfully-obtained criminal convictions. Prior to the trial Pirro was fond of speaking about, “thirteen witnesses who heard racial epithets.” At trial she couldn’t produce one.

As regards Mr. Sauer’s “sixteen witnesses;” there were only three eyewitnesses to the entire encounter, including the shooting, Cablevision repairmen Kevin O’Donnell and Michael Dillon, who witnessed the incident from the cab of their company van and Jimmy White, a school teacher and a local customer who was at the deli having come home from work. Of those three, the Prosecution did not get much mileage out of O’Donnell, who had damaged his own credibility attempting to come off as a hero, initially, claiming that he had jumped from the van and attempted to stop Campbell from beating Officer DiGuglielmo’s father with the bat; not very supportive of the DA’s theory. Jimmy White, who refused to be turned by the Dobbs Ferry Police, was not used by the Prosecution for obvious reasons, nor by the Defense because he refused to
meet with Defense attorneys prior to testifying.

That left one witness who could be used by the Prosecution, effectively, Dillon, who had changed his account after four nights of being
hounded by Dobbs Ferry Police; taken from his job in Mamaroneck each night by three detectives and the Chief of Police, until he finally
gave them the account the District Attorney wanted from him.

On page 13 of the District Attorney’s Affirmation, Mr. Sauer tells the Appellate Court the same lie that the Office had offered to Mr. DiGuglielmo’s attorneys, and to County Court Judge Bellantoni nearly a year ago, stating, “Prior to the hearing, the People notified the Defense that the search for reports of any meetings with Michael Dillon and the Dobbs Ferry Police Department between October 3 and October 7, 1996, conducted by the Dobbs Ferry Police Department under the supervision of Police Chief Betsy Gelardi, had met with negative results, and that no
such interviews had, in fact, taken place.”

After so many years under Jeanine Pirro, and now under Janet DiFiore, a combined total of nearly 15 years, it is obvious that for Mr. Sauer, and, indeed, the entire Appeals Bureau of the Westchester District Attorney’s Office, the line between truth and fiction has been so blurred as to be
virtually nonexistent. The acts of prosecutorial misconduct and Constitutional violation have been so many and so repetititve as to be virtually indefensible by truthful explanation. Both in the State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, we have witnessed baldfaced lying on numerous occasions by Assistant DAs who know that even if they are caught lying, they will suffer no consequences.

There can be no question that the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals, the State’s highest tribunal, have, for decades, displayed a distinct bias in favor of the prosecution in homicide cases, particularly those involving so-called Depraved Mind, or Depraved Indifference Murder. A nebulous concept, from the moment it was made a part of the Criminal Code in 1967, for four decades it served as a fall-back, or safety net, for prosecutors with weak, poorly investigated Intentional Murder cases.

Not until March 2004 with the Gonzalez decision in a case out of Rochester, in Monroe County, did the Court of Appeals begin to grapple with the problem it had allowed to fester for nearly 40 years. By that time, hundreds of individuals had been convicted of Depraved Indifference Murder when, in point of fact, their act in taking a life was not the least bit indifferent.

Application of the statute reached the point of scandal as prosecutors, such as Jeanine Pirro, with little concern for finding truth, but a heavy commitment to their political careers, would offer juries a smorgasbord choice between Intentional and Depraved Indifference Murder, each
carrying a 25-year to-life sentence.

Even now, despite a succession of cases since Gonzalez and Payne, the high court has refused to definitively deal with the problem, and many judges still do not grasp the fine distinction, the level of recklessness, and indifference needed to meet the threshhold.

Judge Bellantoni’s decision, while dealing with the issues surrounding Depraved Indifference Murder, given that DiGuglielmo was acquitted of intentional murder in the Second Degree, as well as assault, nonetheless was predicated essentially on the tainted prosecutorial presentation, including the failure of the Prosecution to share the original statements of Michael Dillon and Jimmy White with the Defense, as well as the process by which Michael Dillon’s statement before the grand jury, and at trial, were achieved.

Assistant District Attorney Sauer, in his Memorandum of Law, in an attempt to distort the intrinsic role of Depraved Indifference Murder in Judge Bellantoni’s calculations, repeatedly refers to “the likelihood of reversal of the trial Court’s order dismissing the indictment is, in light of Policano virtually a foregone conclusion.” Mr. Sauer attempts to skirt the real issues that provoked the decision to grant Richard DiGuglielmo’s 440.10 motion, the Brady and Rosario violations, as well as the overall tainted prosecutorial activity that produced both the indictment and the conviction at trial, instead suggesting that DiGuglielmo’s release resulted from the trial Judge’s “disregard of the significant principal of stare decisis
by conferring on the defendant retroactive application of the ‘New Depraved Indifference Rule.’”

The fact is, Judge Bellantoni was not releasing Richard DiGuglielmo based upon Policano, but merely observing that having overturned both the conviction as well as the indictment from which it sprang, because each was achieved through unlawful prosecutorial misconduct, Defendant DiGuglielmo, having been acquitted of Intentional Murder, cannot be reindicted under the Statute of Depraved Indifference Murder, as the Court of Appeals has redefined it, for an act that was clearly intentional: “Three shots to center mass at close range.”

Westchester Guardian/Richard Diguglielmo.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

SPECIAL COURT REPORT

“ADA Murphy’s Testimony Not Only Lacks Credibility,
It Flies In The Face Of Reason And Common Sense”
– Judge Rory J. Bellantoni
Westchester County Court, White Plains
Judge Rory J. Bellantoni Presiding

Nine months following an eight day 440.10 Evidentiary Hearing in the case of Richard DiGuglielmo, Judge Rory J. Bellantoni handed up a
long-awaited ruling last Thursday afternoon. In a 69-page comprehensive decision that took into account every word that was uttered
in the hearing as well as at the trial in 1997, Judge Bellantoni borrowed from one he called “The insightful and learned Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” who aptly stated, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutu-ality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”He then declared, “Based upon the foregoing, Defendant’s motion to vacate his conviction is granted. As the principles of double jeopardy have attached to the charge of Intentional Murder, as well as to other counts in the indictment for which Defendant was found not guilty, Defendant cannot be re-tried for said crimes. Moreover, as the underlying facts of the trial record make clear, as discussed more fully above, the circumstances under which Defendant shot the victim in this case preclude a finding that the Defendant acted with Depraved Indifference, under any theory or precedent, including Register.

Accordingly, it is ordered that the People are precluded from retrying Defendant on the charge of Depraved Indifference Murder. It is further ordered that Defendant’s conviction is hereby vacated and Defendant is to be released forthwith. It is further ordered that there can be no
re-trial without a new indictment, which requires leave of the Court. Under the circumstances of this case, the People may not seek leave
to re-indict. Based upon the improper conduct of the police and the People, any re-trial in this matter would be irreparably tainted. The People should not benefit from their misconduct.”

Judge Rory J. Bellantoni’s decision and order brings down the curtain on 12 years of lies and prosecutorial misconduct; one of the more horriffic abuses of process and miscarriages of justice in the Office of the Westchester County District Attorney, under Jeanine Pirro, one of the most psychopathic, self-serving political creatures to ever occupy the position. At her instruction and behest, Assistant District Attorneys Patricia Murphy and Perry Perrone, in co conspiracy with the entire three-man Detective Bureau of the Dobbs Ferry Police Department, under the personal direction of Police Chief George Longworth, coerced, intimidated, and wore down the only three actual eyewitnesses to the 90 seconds of altercation initiated by Charles Campbell, ultimately wielding a metal baseball bat, and ended in his death by a shooting that was clearly in self-defense.

Pirro, who was seeking re-election as District Attorney, for reasons of self-promotion, and consistent with her confabulations, distortions, and lies for 12 years, turned a clear case of Justifiable Homicide, by reason of Self-Defense, into a “Bias Crime” because the 32-year-old amateur boxer and bodybuilder, who was swinging the metal baseball bat at Police Of-ficer Richard DiGuglielmo’s middleaged father’s head at the instant he was shot, happened to be Black.

The decision not only exposes the criminality and treachery employed by ADAs Patricia Murphy and Perry Perrone, prior to, and during the 1997 trial, but also the obfuscation, and contempt for the Court, practiced and shamefully displayed by ADAs Timothy Ward and Robert Sauer throughout the eight-day hearing.

Bellantoni cites the “win at any cost” attitude and all of the disrespectful and outrageous conduct Ward and Sauer engaged in throughout
the hearing. And, with respect to the Dobbs Ferry Police, he observes, “Indeed, the hearing evidence showed that the Dobbs Ferry Police treated certain eyewitnesses more like suspects than like witnesses.”

Speaking of ADA Patricia Mur-phy’s testimony before him at the hearing, Judge Bellantoni states, “ADA Murphy’s testimony not only
lacks credibility, it flies in the face of reason and common sense.” The Judge goes on to say, “What is further troubling is ADA Murphy’s lack of concern as to why Mr. Dillon first stated that Defendant acted in self-defense, and days later gave a contradictory statement, particularly since she was the lead, and most senior, Assistant District Attorney prosecuting the matter.”

After enumerating several instances of Patricia Murphy’s prosecutorial misconduct and lack of credibility before his Court, Judge Bellantoni
quotes from In re: Doe 801F. Supp. 478, 1992, declaring, “Prosecutors are shepherds of justice. When a government lawyer, with enormous resources at his or her disposal abuses power and ignores ethical standards, he or she not only undermines public trust, but in-flicts
damage beyond calculation to the System Of Justice. This alone compels the responsible and ethical exercise of power.”

Quite clearly, Patricia Murphy and Perry Perrone had neither ethics nor conscience in their prosecution of Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo. Upon learning of Judge Bellantoni’s Decision and Order, Tony Castro also quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declaring, “Justice may be a long time coming; but it’s never too late.”

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.

Janet Difiore.

The Court Report
By Richard Blassberg

The Wheels Of Justice Continue To Turn For Richard DiGuglielmo
Westchester County Court, White Plains
Judge Rory J. Bellantoni Presiding

Last Monday morning, November 19, the twice-postponed Post-Dispositional Evidentiary Hearing, scheduled by County Court Judge Rory Bellantoni in response to the 440.10 Application of Richard DiGuglielmo, presently serving a 20-year-to-life sentence for the Depraved Indifference Murder of Charles Campbell, got underway.

One of the more controversial and improbable outcomes in a long series of suspect prosecutions under the 12-year reign of former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, herself the subject of a federal investigation, the conviction of New York City Transit Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo for the killing of a bat-wielding assailant who was beating the of-ficer’s father, has defied legal sensibility for more than a decade.

Many have recognized the prosecution as one of political opportunity for Pirro, who tried the October 3, 1996 tragedy in the press for a whole year, employing the services of ‘rabble-rouser’ Al Sharpton, and paid busloads of pickets, the entire time before coming to trial, just before running for re-election in November 1997.

Officer DiGuglielmo, his middle-aged father, and his brother-in-law, were all acquitted of Second Degree Assault. Additionally, Officer DiGuglielmo was acquitted of Second Degree Intentional Murder; but, through a series of incorrect jury instructions, and twisted and turned witness testimony, he was convicted under the theory of Depraved Indifference Murder, a crime for which he could not be convicted today.

One of the witnesses, Michael Dillon, then 20, who immediately following the incident, told 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.” That witness gave sworn statements to investigators for defendant DiGuglielmo, more than a year ago, that are the basis for the present 440.10 Motion before Bellantoni. Those statements, that allege that
between his first statement to Dobbs Ferry Police the evening of October 3, 1996, in which he described an act of self-defense, and his last statement, given in the wee hours of October 8, there were at least two other interrogations by that police department, involving harrassment by two or more officers coming to his job and
taking him in the back of a marked police car to Dobbs Ferry Police Headquarters for several hours of interrogation, three nights in a row, until he changed his account to one that satisfied their needs.

Prior to the commencement of testimony, Judge Bellantoni ruled on an informal request by the Rivertowns Enterprise Newspaper to use a camera and recording device in the courtroom, denying it. The Judge then declared, “We are here today to take the testimony from Mr. Michael Dillon as to whether there was any
undue influence exerted on him between his first and last statements.”

Attorney Andrew Schapiro, of the law firm Mayer, Brown in New York City, who has been Mr. DiGuglielmo’s pro bono attorney for more than eight years, called his first witness, Michael Dillon, now 31, to the stand.

Schapiro inquired, “Mr. Dillon, on October 3, 1996, did you have the occasion to sign a statement?” Dillon responded, “Yes.” Schapiro then asked, “On October 7, 1996, did you have the occasion to again sign a statement?” Dillon replied, “Yes.” Schapiro then asked, “Was that statement accurate?” The witness
answered, “No.”

After establishing that Dillon had given an interview immediately following the incident, to Channel 4 Television News, and voir diring the videotape containing a clip from the interview of October 3, 1996, that tape was played and viewed by everyone in the courtroom, including some 2 dozen family, friends and supporters of DiGuglielmo on one side of the courtroom and an equal number of same for the family of decedent Charles Campbell, on the other.

Following the tape, Mr. Schapiro asked Dillon to read from the statement he gave to Dobbs Ferry Police on October 3, 1996, shortly after the shooting. Describing Officer DiGuglielmo’s actions, he read, “When he reached to within three or four feet of him, the Black male was still swinging the bat.”

Schapiro asked, “Did the police question you again?” The witness said, “Yes.” Schapiro continued, “How did you learn they were looking for you?” Dillon responded, “They showed up at my job.”

Schapiro probed deeper, “Did you go anywhere with the police?”

Dillon answered, “Yes, to the police precinct in Dobbs Ferry.” Asked how long he was questioned for, Mr. Dillon estimated about two hours. He went on to explain that the Dobbs Ferry Police showed up three more times at his job, each time reporting the same scenario, each time transporting him in the back of a police car, essentially handling him like a suspect rather than a witness. He described the police interrogations as an “intimidating atmosphere.”

He acknowledged that family members, his father, his older sister “thought the Dobbs Ferry Police Department’s behavior toward him was strange.” Bringing out a copy of the last of several statements taken from him by the
police, attorney Schapiro asked Dillon, “The October 7, 1996 statement, was that in your words?” Dillon responded, “No.”

At this point, Assistant District Attorney Timothy Ward sought to voir-dire on the statement, which was actually produced after many hours of interrogation at about 1am October 8, 1996. Granted permission by the Judge to proceed, Ward asked Dillon to read the entire statement to himself and then, upon the witness’ completion of the task, Ward asked, “Any words added or subtracted by Dobbs Ferry Police?” Dillon answered, “No.” Ward then asked, “At the bottom where it says deponent, did you sign that?” Dillon responded, “Yes.”

Schapiro who now continued his direct examination asked, “Is this statement in your own words?” The witness answered, “No.” Going further, Schapiro got specific, “What does this statement say about whether the bat was swinging?” Dillon responded, “It says he was not swinging the bat.”

Attorney Schapiro then asked, “How did you feel about that?” The response from Dillon was, “I was feeling intimidated and tired.” Schapiro then asked, “Are you nervous today?” Dillon answered, “Extremely.”

Schapiro: “Do you want to be here?”

Dillon: “No.”

Schapiro: (Referring to an investigator for the Defense) “A er you signed a statement for Mr. Duno, did anyone from the DA’s office show up at your home in Harrison?”

Dillon: “Yes. DA investigator Ed Murphy, with a gentleman I don’t know.”

Dillon then described going to the DA’s Office and going over the October 8, 1996 statement for one and a half hours.

Mr. Schapiro now produced the e-mail that Dillon sent to Defense Investigator Duno following that meeting at the DA’s Office with Assistant DA Ward, Investigator Murphy, and another DA attorney.

ADA Ward immediately objected to exposure of the e-mail, but was overruled by Judge Bellantoni. Ward then began to voir-dire with, “You were concerned...” at which point Bellantoni asked, “Are you going to voire-dire or cross-examine him?” Ward immediately backed off and discontinued his line of questioning.

Mr. Dillon now told the Court that he felt intimidated at his August 11 meeting with Ward and Murphy at the Westchester District Attorney’s Office, amongst other reasons, because Mr. Ward had asked him if he was sure he wanted to get reinvolved in the case given that “in 1996 it was a race issue, and I would be opening myself up again.”


ADA Ward now began his cross-examination of witness Michael Dillon, attempting to soften the impact of what Dillon had just accused him of doing at the August 11 meeting. Ward asked, “Do you remember who was at that meeting with you at the DA’s office in August?” Dillon answered, “You and Mr. Murphy, and another person.”

There followed several questions designed to shake Dillon from his certainty and his feelings toward what had occurred on August 11, but the witness held firm. Finally, getting nowhere with his line of questioning, Ward asked, “Do you know why you are here today?” Dillon said, “Yes.” Ward challenged, “Why are you here?”
Dillon shot back, “To tell the truth.”

It was now 1pm, and Mr. Ward was grateful to break for lunch. As matters turned out, the hearing did not resume after lunch because of an unexpected intervening event precipitated by Administrative Judge Frances
Nicolai.

Analysis:


The hearing into recent statements by Michael Dillon, key witness in the trial of Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo in 1997, alleging that the statement he gave at trial that coincided with the last of five consecutive statements extracted from him by the Dobbs Ferry Police was not accurate as regarded what he actually witnessed, and initially reported, concerning the conduct of bat-wielding assailant Charles Campbell on the evening of October 3, 1996 and Defendant DiGuglielmo’s response to him, was called for in response to the 440.10 Motion brought by attorneys for Mr. DiGuglielmo more than a year ago.

Mr. Dillon is not the only witness or potential trial witness who has indicated that the Dobbs Ferry Police engaged in unlawful intimidation and witness-turning in a “full court press” effort to get statements and testimony for trial that would support the confabulated version of events by Jeanine Pirro in her effort to turn a clear case of self-defense, a justifiable homicide, into a bias crime simply because the enraged assailant was a Black man. the so-called “Deli Case”, much like the “Strike Zone” case, involving Anthony DiSimone, are two of the more well-known and egregious examples of Mrs. Pirro’s “prosecutions of political opportunity.”

It is most unfortunate that, once again, Mrs. Pirro’s successor sees fit to defend the extreme prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in Police Officer Richard DiGuglielmo’s conviction based upon false testimony, in reality, suborned perjury, just as in the case of Anthony DiSimone, who was released from prison earlier this year, on a Writ of Habeus Corpus from Federal Court when the Westchester DA was compelled, seconds before a similar evidentiary hearing in Federal Court, to acknowledge that she was withholding 376 pages and 52 boxes of exculpatory material, including a confession by the actual killer, of Louis Balancio Jr. in 1994.


Northern Westchester RoundUp

Compiled by Catherine Wilson


Chappaqua:

Greeley High School students walked out of school in protest against a proposed class schedule change for the 2008-2009 school year.

Cortlandt Manor:

The Section 1 Boys Soccer Coaches Association hosted the annual recognition dinner for county coaches and players. Awards were given for All-Section and Honorable Mention players, League MVP’s, and League Coaches of the Year.

Katonah:


Republican Andrew Saul, vice Chairman of the M.T.A., drops out of Congressional race against Democrat John Hall Mount Kisco:

The town of Mt. Kisco is seeking to purchase property owned by the Rene Dubos Center that abuts Byram Lake. The New York State Supreme Court just ruled that the Center may not sell this land for development. Mt. Kisco is hoping to preserve the property as open space.


Ossining:
Anne Trovato, convicted of killing her mother, Ossining schoolteacher Patricia Mery, has acknowledged that the father of her four-year old daughter is a local fight promoter, Ronnie Kerner.

Valhalla:


Local community groups and doctors are protesting the use of live dogs for lab courses at the New York Medical College.

Janet Difiore.

The Court Report
By Richard Blassberg

A Decade Too Late, The Wheels Of Justice Finally Start Turning

Wednesday, July 25th, with the holding of oral arguments by Westchester County Court Judge Rory J. Bellantoni, the Wheels of Justice finally began turning in the case of Officer Richard DiGuglielmo, maliciously and
wrongfully prosecuted, convicted, and sent to state prison for a crime he did not commit, a decade ago. A New York City Transit Police Officer for twelve years at the time of the incident, Officer DiGuglielmo did, in fact,
fire “three shots to center mass” killing Charles Campbell who was beating DiGuglielmo’s father with a metal baseball bat, late in the afternoon of October 3, 1996. Simply, and accurately stated, DiGuglielmo did what
the law called for under the circumstances, both in his capacity as a police officer, and as a civilian. Under two
separate applicable New York State statutes his response, saving the life of an unarmed, innocent, civilian was a
justifiable homicide irrespective of the fact that the life he saved was that of his middle-aged father.

The bat-wielding assailant, Charles Campbell, was an amateur boxer and body builder, with a long criminal
record, including violent offenses, who was known, even amongst his associates and employers, to have “a short
fuse.” He had already broken the elder DiGuglielmo’s hand, and had severely injured his leg with blows, that
one eyewitness said, “could be heard a block away.” Another witness had said Campbell was going to “crush the father’s head like a watermelon.” And, in fact, Campbell was swinging to do precisely that when shot, as the bullet entry points clearly demonstrated, despite DA Pirro’s fiction to the contrary.

Officer DiGuglielmo’s parents, and some 18 other supporters filled one side of the spectators gallery, as
Defense Attorneys Andrew Shapiro, and Steven Lewis engaged Assistant DAs Robert Sauer and Timothy Ward in argument of the merits of several issues raised in a 440.10 Appeal of DiGuglielmo’s conviction for Depraved
Indifference Murder.

Analysis

In any of sixty-one other counties of New York State, other than Westchester County, under DA Jeanine Pirro, the fact pattern would not have called for an indictment. But, for Mrs. Pirro, Officer Richard DiGuglielmo
represented a prosecution of opportunity, not unlike her malicious, and unlawful prosecution of Anthony DiSimone for the murder of Louis Balancio, three years earlier. Each of these young men, totally innocent of the crime that Mrs. Pirro couldn’t resist falsely accusing them of, went to prison for the sole purpose of furthering her twisted political agenda.

Neither prosecution, nor the confabulated fiction attached to each, had anything to do with finding the truth, or bringing about justice. Judge Bellantoni opened the proceedings addressing the Defense with, “The focus has changed as we have gone forward. I want to give the Defense the opportunity to make a record.” The Judge was making reference to the 440.10 Application that he had been considering for many months meeting with both sides, Defense and Prosecution attorneys, in conference, in an attempt to deal with a number of issues that had continued to develop, from investigation going forward, suggesting that significant information had been, and continues to be, withheld by the District Attorney’s Office.

The premise of a 440.10 Application is that there are issues, particular information, ‘unavailable’ to a convicted
defendant, at the time of his trial and conviction, which, if presented to the trier of fact, the jury, would
likely have produced a different outcome. In DiGuglielmo’s case there are a number of such issues. One involves the fact that the crime for which he was convicted, Depraved Indifference Murder, is one for which he could not be indicted, much less convicted today. However, despite that fact, the State’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, under the politically self-serving hand of Judith Kaye, has outrageously closed the door to all but a very few wrongfully and unlawfully prosecuted and convicted for four decades under the statute. There was nothing ‘indifferent’ about Officer DiGuglielmo’s action, having fired three rounds to center mass at close range, precisely as trained to for twelve years by the New York City Police Department, in such circumstances. And, the jury, considering those circumstances, refused to convict him of Intentional Murder, or even Assault.

Analysis


In light of the New York Court Of Appeals’ cowardice over the last year, when put to the test by the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the issue of Depraved Indifference Murder has become one that will
go all the way to the Supreme Court because Judith Kaye, and Company would rather violate the Constitutional rights of several hundred innocent citizens than admit to the Court’s complicity over forty years.

A number of other issues were raised in DiGuglielmo’s present 440.10 Application. Referencing, perhaps the most urgent, Judge Bellantoni declared, “The key witness, Mr. Dillon who saw the incident from start to
finish and was closest to the parties, has unequivocally stated that his trial testimony was inaccurate as he was worn down.” Attorney Andrew Shapiro went on to explain the implications of Mr. Dillon’s recent submissions to
the Court. He indicated, firstly, that the issue of coercion of a witness, that would be a serious violation if engaged in by police and/or prosecutors, was implied. And, secondly, Shapiro discussed his concerns that the DA’s Of-fice never provided trial counsel with information regarding the numerous interrogations Mr. Dillon is claiming occurred between his first statement to Dobbs Ferry Police, the evening of the incident, October 3, 1996, and the statement he gave in the early morning hours of October 8th, concealment of which Shapiro said would constitute “a Rosario violation.”

Bellantoni then asked Shapiro, “How is it Rosario material?” Shapiro proceeded to explain that if, in fact, the Dobbs Ferry Police had interrogated Mr. Dillon, as he alleges, between his first statement and his last, four or more times in between, on October 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th, there had to be memo pads, follow up reports, and possibly tape recordings none of which were ever turned over to the Defense. Shapiro went on to elaborate
on the issue of tape recording of statements by the Dobbs Ferry Police, indicating that despite denials by that department, Mr. Dillon and other witnesses have reported the use of tape recorders.

Judge Bellantoni, at this point, revisited the Depraved Indifference Murder issue, remarking, “The Payne, Suarez, and Feingold rulings cannot be applied retroactively, thus keeping a person in prison who, if he were tried today, could not be tried under the Depraved Indifference Murder Statute.” He went on, “You would like me to rule that the Court of Appeals ruling is Unconstitutional.”

Shapiro came back, “We are not saying that Depraved Indifference Murder is not a crime, but, that under the statute as it is today, our client could not be tried under it.” Bellantoni responded, indicating that he was
in no position to overrule the state’s highest court irrespective of his own position on the matter.

Returning to the affidavit of the key witness, Michael Dillon, Bellantoni said, “There are allegations that Mr. Dillon gave a statement and then was questioned six or seven hours a day for several days.”

ADA Sauer interjected, “On September seventh he’s on the stand and he’s being cross-examined. Why doesn’t he say something?” Sauer goes on, “We have no reports of other contacts with the police between his first and
his last statements.” He tries to make the argument that there were only two statements.

Then Judge Bellantoni asked Mr. Sauer how it could be that the Dobbs Ferry Detectives could have spoken only of two statements given that there were also statements on the fourth, fifth, and sixth of October? He then proceeded to raise the issue of a possible Brady violation in the District Attorney’s failure to give information of several interviews of witnesses to the Defense Attorneys.

Apparently lacking any substantive counter to the Judge’s statements, Mr. Sauer attempted to use Mr. Dillon’s statement that he was “tired,” and lacked the opportunity to review his statement, on October 7th, (that actually
ran for some 3 ½ hours, beyond 1:00am the morning of the eighth.) Bellantoni then explored the difference between intimidation and coercion on the part of police interrogators. Mr. Sauer again insisting, “There was no information that there were any other interviews between the fourth and the eleventh. We gave everything we had to the Defense.”

At this point in the proceedings, obviously sensing the District Attorney’s resistance to possible exposure of prosecutorial, and/or police misconduct that might come out at a hearing from witnesses under oath, and
subject to cross-examination, the Judge, addressing Mr. Sauer, asked, “Isn’t it true that the best way to resolve this is with a hearing? You said before we can’t judge the credibility of Mr. Dillon based on the affidavits.”

Sauer responded, “No Your Honor.”

The Judge came back, “Isn’t there a presumption that the outcome might have been different if he gave a story on the witness stand that is remarkably different from his original statement?”

Sauer, then tried to slip one by the Court remarking, “They are trying to raise issues they could have raised on cross-examination at trial.”

Analysis


Of course, Mr. Sauer knew very well that the whole point of the discussion thus far involved the failure of the District Attorney’s Office to turn over, to the Defense, discovery materials that would have revealed the
multiple interrogations that occurred between Mr. Dillon’s first statement to the Dobbs Ferry Police and his so-called “second statement.”

Mr. Shapiro then spoke of a “fundamental misunderstanding of Rosario,” referencing multiple interrogations, and asking, “How could it not have been different if a witness had said, I lied?” Turning to Bellantoni he went on, “Your Honor is right; in the initial filing and in our motion we referred to the pressure having been applied.”

The Judge then added, “Doesn’t it make a difference if the witness comes to Court and says this was self-defense?” Then Mr. Shapiro posed the question most difficult for the Prosecution, “In the interest of truthfulness and finality why are the People opposing a hearing?”

Glancing down at the Defense filings, Bellantoni then stated, “These papers were filed in September 2006, and this Court has contemplated it for almost a year.” Then, turning to Mr. Sauer, he asked, “Are you saying the
standard for granting a hearing is the same as for calling for a new trial?”

Analysis

That question, of course, highlighted the very purpose of the oral argument, essentially a hearing to determine whether there should be an Evidentiary Hearing to expose and explore the issues before the Court with respect to the possible withholding of significant discovery materials. It is not such a shocking allegation, after all, regarding a District Attorney’s Office that the legal community has now come to recognize was quite capable
of concealing 376 pages and 52 boxes of exculpatory material in order to send an innocent man, Anthony DiSimone, to prison for life, while perpetuating a thirteen-year lie.

There followed discussion of other information that investigators for the Defense have recently uncovered involving one of the jurors who had been convicted of a crime, and who would never have sat on the jury had
that fact been revealed.

Stating, “I don’t believe Mr. Dillon’s testimony here, is incredible,” Bellantoni indicated that he would conduct a hearing, the purpose of which will be, in his words, “to run down, once and for all, exactly what Mr. Dillon
is alleging.” The dates of the hearing agreed upon were September 24th, 25th, and 26th. It would appear the Wheels of Justice have finally begun to turn for Richard DiGuglielmo.

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.