the stench of New York courts
THE NEW YORK TIMES KNOWS MORE THAN IT ADMITS
ABOUT THE MOST CORRUPT JUDICIARY IN THE UNITED STATES OR
HOW SULZBURGER AND ABRAMS STABBED REFORM IN THE BACK

All the noose that's fit to hang itself

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I wrote this in June of 1994. It got lost among my files, so this is a first time publication. 

In New York law and politics, the more crises that cause the politicians to promise reform the more corruption grows in the gutters of Albany and Brooklyn. The New York courts are far more corrupt today than a decade ago. They certainly are more so than in 1972 when Maurice Nadjari convened a grand jury which began to investigate and issue indictments. Rockefeller gave him authority over the five borough's (counties) hack party DAs. He was ready to prosecute and jail a multitude of New York City judges. When he and the Grand Jury were ready to use goods on hundreds of sitting judges, the rug was pulled out from under them by all his liberal allies. 

This country isn’t as much the republic or democracy as we would like to believe. Jefferson for all his faults should be hallowed more than any other Founding Father for forewarning the tyranny of the judges. In his wildest imaging he could never have excepted that no only has been growing throughout our history, but the most rapidly in last decade under a so-called strict-interpretation court than ever. Imagine if the other constructionists were let loose?

Who would think of saying "Yes, your Honor, No Your Honor, "if it pleases your Honor" to the President? The Supreme Court decided he is in the public eye. People can say or write anything they want about him or any other person in the public eye. Are judges not also in the public eye? Not according to the Supreme Court which cut a special exemption for judges. They are immune. Try being free to tell a dinky traffic court judge that you don't like his opinion or attitude and you’ll find out the medieval "Divine Right of Kings" theory is alive and well in our society.

All it took was one shady judge to threaten a libel suit against the hallowed New York Times if it continued to publish the findings of the Nadjari commission.

Floyd Abrams, self-styled "big mouth" Dershowitz-type First Amendment defender played the low card when money was the issue. He ordered his client to distance itself from Nadjari. But he never let anyone forget he won the landmark Supreme Court case Times v. Sullivan against Southern "racist" police departments. The idealist liberals of the Warren Court lived up so high in the trees that they breathed a different air than we mortals. They repeated ad finitum ad nauseam that a free society could not survive without a free and fearless press. The power Times v. Sullivan vindicated Brennan clearly wrote was given to the Times to protect the people, not to make money, they said.

Free-Press Guru Abrams for everyone else but himself and his clients explained to the inherited wealth that controlled the Times board as if to children "If judicial corruption in New York courts is really so widespread, who would try any dishonest judge’s libel case against this paper? Another judge who feared Nadjari" In other words, where could the New York Times find an honest judge to hear the libel suit? 

Besides, even if it won at trial, the judges would wear the Times down with appeals until the cost of defending itself would be "economically unwarranted." The real issue of widespread judicial corruption would be shouted down in these false cries of "witch hunt." The massive problem of corruption would be lost in trivial defenses by the judges and their high powered attorneys, ironically like Abrams himself. The public would be played for the fool.

The Times own writers were now attacking Nadjari.  Sidney Schaumberg, by that time at Newsday, wrote:

Consider the experience of Maurice Nadjari- the special prosecutor appointed by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1972 to investigate the criminal justice system in the wake of the Knapp Commission disclosures about police corruption. The conventional wisdom is that Nadjari brought about his own downfall and dismissal because he had no regard for constitutional protections, ran roughshod over defendants' rights.

When did you ever hear of a judge being run roughshod over or being a poor and lonely defendant? What bull.

There are few lawyers in New York over 50 unaware of these facts. But were they to have openly pressured the Times into investigating or offered to testify to payoffs they had to make, it would be like a businessman burning down his own store. They would have to be both crazy (many fit that category) but masochistic (while many are ill, few suffer that problem) as well. 

Many lawyers, bad as they are, are not as bad as judges either in 1972 or the current Brooklyn corruption. They were eager to help if only not to have to face these mentally defective judges and their yelling and screaming every day. One put it well. "That would end my career. I couldn't support my family. Only the press has the immunity to go after corrupt judges. We can help, but only off the record."

Not quite so. If only one lawyer himself involved in this massive judicial racketeering had been dying with some incurable disease and with no heirs the "courageous" Floyd Abrams and the New York Times might still have been forced to defend their abrogation of the very responsibility Floyd Abrams prides himself on winning  Times v. Sullivan  but that lawyer would have been a saint. He would have had to have a greater concern for leaving the practice of the law in New York State more honorable than he found it. He would have had to be immune to the thought of his posthumous reputation being fed on by timeservers like Schaumberg.

THE TRUTH IS IN THE PRETZEL-TWISTED DETAILS

New York State Administrative Judge for Queens, Francis X. Smith, was convicted on Federal RICO charges that he acted as a go-between in trying to arrange bribes for Donald Manes Queens Borough President. Guess who the bag man was? 

The bagman was none other than John A. Zacarro, husband of 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro. He was to go on trial in Federal court that September on charges alleging that he took over from Smith as the go-between. Smith brought in his colleague, Judge William Brennan (no relation to the U.S. Supreme Court's Brennan). 

Federal Judge Weinstein of New York’s Eastern District (Long Island, where the writer lives and played losing politics himself) gave Smith and Brennan only a "slap-on-the-wrist" year at the Federal Government's country club, Allenwood . If Weinstein, a harsh judge with small-time crooks, had followed Federal Attorney Andrew Maloney's recommendation most of New York City’s sitting judges were prepared to race each other for his office to turn state’s evidence. Maloney’s dream of cleaning up the entire New York City court system faded away. Federal judges protected state judges. 

This irony is especially true here because Weinstein has something of a reputation among so-called legal scholars and in law schools where he is called "the quintessential activist judge" But, then, that quote is from the New York Times. Perhaps knowing what we do now we ought to take it with a grain of salt.

The Queens County convictions were tied in with Donald Manes, once Borough President of Queens County. In 1986 Donald Manes, then Queens Borough President committed suicide. A few weeks later rather than face Federal Racketeering charges and Bronx’s Stanley Friedman went to prison in the largest NYC bribery scandal in a century. Jimmy Breslin, Leading the City Astray, Newsday, June 30, 1999. Queens lawyer Marvin H. Bergman was acquitted of Federal charges that he had bribed Manes who was his law partner to secure business with the Parking Violations Bureau. 

But like archeological digs, here the stench got worse the deeper the excavation. Manes’ suicide in early 1986 had brought the federal corruption probe to the public eye. These bribes bought big-time narcotics dealers freedom as well as selling a local cable franchise. Again, John Zacarro is at the center. Whenever there is corruption in Queens, breaking a pornography ring, misuse of probate monies, etc., he also has a big part in the drama.

WHY I HAVE AN INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF FACTS EVEN THE TIMES HAS LONG FORGOTTEN AND I AM MYSELF VICTIM OF BRIBERY

I became familiar with how sordid over its entire history the New York courts have been when I lost my children in Nassau Supreme because I now know but only for it to upset me that wife bribed Judge Alfred S. Robbins, Supreme Court, Nassau, New York. She is heiress to the multi-trillion Lennox Air Conditioning and Heating fortune. 

I got in touch with everyone I could. Either no one knew, hardly likely, or they sure weren't going to tell me or they were scared. I crazily spent every evening in New York Law School using the free new legal research on the an early version of the Internet. I found a book reference to Howard James, Crisis in the Courts, McKay (1968) compiled from a series in the Christian Science Monitor. It is the most damning compendium of facts on the corruption and incompetence of the judiciary nationally. It won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1968. I went to law school in the 80s. 

Remember this is 1968, four years before the Nadjari commission. The book's author singles New York out as one the worst examples. The Times will not only abandon Nadjari, but Rockefeller will step down to become vice president.  Old-line Democrat Hugh Carey will succeed him and put Nadjari put out to pasture. 

The Christian Science Monitor appeared to be the only newspaper willing to put into action what Abrams liked talking about. It seemed fearless in publishing its findings about the national problem of dishonesty in the judiciary. Even the Supreme Court acted like a Papacy too lofty to clean up the Stygian stables. I spoke to the Monitor's New York bureau chief Lucia Mouat. She must have been a real veteran with the Monitor. She knew the author of the series and the book and last remembers him as being up in New Hampshire running small weeklies. She also gave me the name of the reporter in Boston headquarters who covered legal matters. Obviously, the Monitor wouldn’t do a story on my case in particular. I didn’t think they would.

In the current Brooklyn courts' stories, the New York Times still acts naïve out of fear. If I know, it surely knows that the judges up to the highest court in New York, the Court of Appeals,  kick back 2 years salary to their political bosses. In 1960, the Russell Sage Foundation, one of the oldest and most respected social science research foundations found that two years’ salary was the "going rate" for judgeships, paid in the form of a contribution to the party campaign funds. It may very well be that the percentage is even higher now.

Since the Times killed Nadjari there has been an eerie silence in the New York Times about the malfeasance of judges. Yet according to those who carry the duty of oversight whatever corruption exists in the New York courts is the exception not the rule. That is the argument Chief Judge Judith Kaye  puts out each year on the State of the Judiciary. The truth is corruption is endemic to the system--like buying judgeships from political bosses--not the exception. The New York Times goes on reporting widespread corruption like a sleepwalker.

Long after Nadjari was hounded out of politics and died, the arrogant New York City judges, this time in Queens Supreme Court, were again on the take from drug dealers, pimps, hit men, etc. Again the Queens Chief Administrative Judge was the culprit. And now the New York Times pushes widespread corruption in Brooklyn criminal and matrimonial courts to one of its inside sections. 

The major New York parties are both unusally corrupt and useless even by national stardards. The Times is too closely tied in with the New York State Democratic Party to claim any independence or objectivity. Jayson Blair didn't make that policy. Arthur Schulzburger III did. He is a left over from flower childen of the 60s and probably the worst publisher the paper ever. He appointed Raines, the Times defender of every nut-idea editor. That is far more important than the alleged "sacred" canon Jayson Blair may have broken. 

But in our society we always go after the little guy, Lieutenant William Calley, and let Captain Medina and generals who ordered the overall policies off the hook. 

AFTERWORD ON JUDICIAL CORRUPTION ENDEMIC
THE INFAMOUS STUMP V. SPARKMAN CASE

07/14/92

it occurred to me while sitting in court this morning to ask our "liberal" friends why they have such difficulty with the infallibility of the Pope and none with the immunity of judges? There is a famous case called Stump v. Sparkman where a demented Indiana judge ordered a teenage girl’s tubes tied because he thought she was too promiscuous. 

His court lacked jurisdiction to make such this decision and he denied the girl even a hearing. When she reached adulthood and found all this out, she sued the judge. His defense? No matter how fascist his decision was, she couldn’t get to him because he had judicial immunity. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Here they wrote "the judge is right." Only one member, Potter Stewart, an Eisenhower appointee, wrote, 

A judge is not free, like a loose cannon, to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity. Stump v. Sparkman 5 [435 U.S. 349, 368]. 

The petitioners' brief speaks of "an aura of deism which surrounds the bench . . . essential to the maintenance of respect for the judicial institution." Though the rhetoric may be overblown, I do not quarrel with it. But if aura there be, it is hardly protected by exonerating from liability such lawless conduct as took place here. And if intimidation would serve to deter its recurrence, that would surely be in the public interest. 6  

When you read what "Sandy" has to say about the divinity of the Supremes, you'll realize these nine are above reproach only because they haven't the slightest idea what the rest of us are talking about. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing Shakespeare.