Originally published: March 22, 2014 7:50 PM
Updated: March 22, 2014 8:53 PM
By
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/former-suffolk-judge-s-memoir-details-controversial-tenure-1.7474230
https://www.youtube.com/user/RetJudgeS2
In 2004, eight years after I left Suffolk County, New York where I had served as a judge for almost 17 years, and after I had been, in 1997, the first recipient of the Justice Thurgood Marshall Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the David C. Michaels Award from the New York State Bar Association, and a Special Award for putting "principle ....ahead of expediency" from the NAACP, I was invited to be the guest speaker at the first Martin Luther King Day breakfast of the NAACP in Wilmington, North Carolina. It was my first opportunity to introduce myself and my previous travails to an interested group in Nortn Carolina which was not familiar with me as a "whistle blower" against a corrupt District Attorney's office and Police Homicide Squad in Suffolk County, New York. This is a video from that day in 2004. I had been to Hollywood working with Oscar winning director and screenwriter Abby Mann and Joe Isgro where my story would never be sold to a studio, and my 700 page manuscript was buried in my computer. It was time for the story to be told publicly from the man who lived it! Why would I leave Suffolk County you may ask, and how did I not get reelected? The answer is very simple: "POLITICS!" Apparently, what I had done had so embarrassed the Republican political establishment in Suffolk County that they wanted me off the bench at any cost. My former law partner of 10 years, Dominic Baranello, who was the Democratic County chairman could not elect any Democrat to a countywide office in the Republican dominated county, so he was offered, and he accepted, three judgeships plus mine in exchange for not renominating me, who should have been a hero to the county and my party, although politics was never part of my decision and actions.
http://www.legaleagleproductions.com/?c=bio