We Ask The Westchester DA’s Office: How Many More Are You Concealing?

In Our Opinion...

The Westchester Guardian, having reviewed much of the 376 pages of Brady material, information tending to establish his innocence, unlawfully hidden from Anthony DiSimone for thirteen years, in the massive effort to perpetuate Jeanine Pirro’s confabulated lie, must now ask, when will the DA’s Office make a full and truthfulaccounting to the People of Westchester? Fifty-two boxes of exhibits, and 376 pages of exculpatory testimony and statements are not things that were likely to be lost, or missing, in the offices of any law-abiding District Attorney.

We were present several months ago when Assistant DA Valerie Livingston was compelled, at the very last moment, to tell Federal District Court Judge Charles L. Brieant that there would be no need to go forward with the scheduled evidentiary hearing because the District Attorney’s Office “was withdrawing opposition to the grantingof a writ of Habeas Corpus to Anthony DiSimone,” as they had found 376 pages and 52 boxes of Brady materials that they were turning over to DiSimone’s attorneys, “in the interest of justice.” Of course, having made that admission, the DA’s Office was opposed to an unconditional grant, petitioning the Court, instead, to keep DiSimone locked up, anyway. Livingston left Brieant’s Court literally in tears.

The truth is the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office had its back to the wall. Simply put, they could not allow the evidentiary hearing to go forward that would have lasted for weeks, exposing in minute detail all the evidence, including a confession that clearly pointed the finger of guilt at Nick Djonovic, an Albanian youth, whohad stabbed Louis Balancio to death at the Strike Zone Bar in 1994, and who Pirro had allowed to escape to Albania as she pursued the prosecution of someone more in keeping with her self-promotional agenda.
Pirro saw the tragic death of young Louis Balancio, reportedly a member of the Hell’s Kitchen Gang, as an opportunity to prove that, despite her husband Al’s known connections to the Mob, the Cosa Nostra, she could prosecute Organized Crime.

In light of all of the above, and further, in light of the fact that on February 27th, in New York City, at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, ADA Livingston handed Mr. DiSimone’s attorneys a one-paragraph letter informing them that “additional material from 1997, which may, or may not, constitute Brady material,” had been found, We believe it is long past the time that District Attorney’s Office must come forward and level with the People of Westchester.

If the District Attorney’s Office was really intending to act “in the interest of justice,” upon Mrs. Pirro’s exit an inventory of all the outstanding cases on appeal, particularly homicides and other major crimes, should have been taken. And, all of the evidence, including all of the Brady material that had been intentionally withheld from those Defendants in each case, should have been turned over, thus separating the Office from the treachery and lies that had been employed by Jeanine Pirro.

Perhaps the Office did, in fact, review all of the major appeals, as they should have. In that case they were perfectly well aware that they were concealing a mountain of evidence that would have cast more than “reasonable doubt” upon the guilt of Anthony DiSimone, but chose nevertheless not to do the right thing! Any way one looks at it, the Office’s continuing pursuit and harassment of Mr. DiSimone perpetuates the unlawful conspiracy of Jeanine Pirro, Clement Patti, Steven Bender, and the entire supporting cast, whose prosecutorial misconduct sent an innocent man to prison.

We now ask two very important questions:

• How many more innocent individuals, sent away to prison by the prosecutorial misconduct of Jeanine Pirro, are you covering up? And,

• When will you stop protecting Mrs. Pirro and start protecting the People of Westchester?