WPCNR WHITE PLAINS REVIEW OF BOOKS. By John F. Bailey. October 7, 2003: The Westchester County District Attorney’s new contribution to discourse on crime and punishment from St. Martin’s Press, at major bookstores now ($24.95), To Punish and Protect, One DA’s Fight Against A System That Coddles Criminals, makes it perfectly clear that Westchester’s DA does not coddle criminals. She recalls eyewitness, crime scenes which vividly deliver the horror television and paper press dismiss with banal routine.
My father gave me four pieces of advice once: 1.) Always get an air-conditioned car. 2.) Central air-condition your house. 3.) Don’t get mad. 4.) Stay out of court. The last advice is particularly true when Westchester’s DA is on the case as To Punish and Protect makes uncompromisingly clear.
The District Attorney’s book is 216 pages (at 11 cents a page) of a what appears to be a running interview with her self-described “collaborator,” Catherine Whitney, and Ms. Whitney’s “writing partner,” Paul Krafin, as Ms. Pirro explains in her preface. She writes, they “have helped transform my words and ideas into cogent, readable prose that perfectly captures my intent.”
Relentless.
TPP is not for the faint of heart. Ms. Pirro gives detail-she-thinks-we-need-to-know descriptions of the depths of violence everyday persons have committed on high profile cases and she relates how these scenes of violence motivated her to avenge the victims. You will note how unfortunate you will be if a loss of self-control to-the-max should bring you within the DA’s crosshairs.
TPP delivers the Pirro Manifesto through Ms. Pirro’s own stories of cases dealing with issues that are her “hot buttons.” She reports from the victim’s point of view.
Hot Buttons
The effect of this selective tour de prosecution is to advance the D.A’s opinions that bail is too low, defense is given too much credibility, judges are too sympathetic to defendants, and sentences too lenient. She advocates for a new system of victim support and therapy to put back together victims’ lives, citing examples of abused children, one who emerged unscathed because of her professional mentorship and another who did not.
The book is supplemented with 57 pages of five Appendices with crime reference materials and details, including: The District Attorney’s Crime Prevention Programs, Internet Safety: What Every Parent Should Know, Know the Facts About Crime: Are You At Risk? (A collection of intriguing recent statistics on Crime, Incidents of Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, Cyber Crimes Against Children, and Underage Drinking, Elder Crime and Victimization, and Hate and Bias Crimes); a timeline she titles Milestones in Victims’ Rights, and Getting Help: Resources for Victims.
Other than being a valuable resource for a person thinking they or a loved one might be being victimized, and creating a sense of paranoia and awareness, the subtle message these Appendixes give is to reinforce that Ms. Pirro is the hardest-working, most creative, most crusading District Attorney Westchester County has-had-ever who really cares.
A Television Pilot?
TPP reads like a character sketch for a movie treatment describing the main protagonist in a television crime series called “Ms. D.A.” with Uma Thurman in the lead, about a crusading, attractive district attorney in a lonely battle for justice for victims with morally bankrupt defense lawyers, a layered, protective of the-criminal justice system, judges, legislators all against her.
The casual reader, even reporters who should know better, will get the picture of a crusading lady tough as nails, unwavering, going out on the point, going where no man before her has dared to go to prosecute crimes against women and families, crimes men ignored or paid lip service before she came onto the D.A. scene.
Where’s Charlie Rose?
Reading the book, I was imagining the image of Ms. Pirro before me as if I was a reporter sitting in her office. She is across the desk from me, hands folded and reflecting in a thoughtful, poised manner on her ten years as District Attorney and her three decades with the Westchester County District Attorney’s office.
I ask her to talk about cases that mattered to her, trends in crime, what concerns her, and she answers me with drama, personal reflections, strong edgy opinions and pours out her side of the story. The book is indeed Jeanine Pirro talking, sharp as a stiletto heel, remorse for victims as only she can deliver, and “on message.” Who wouldn’t vote for her for high office based on the image she portrays in this book?
A Prelude?
TPP is a record of such sessions that Ms. Pirro had with her collaborators. Usually you would expect such a book from a former official after they have left office, reflecting on their career, matters they considered highlights of their career, and the issues she cares passionately about.
However, this book should be much longer, and appears to be hastily constructed because of its repetitive nature, poor editing, and lack of acknowledgment of all the circumstances of the cases by St. Martin’s Press.
Not all the Facts, Ma’am
The absence of any side of the story except the way Ms. Pirro tells it is unfortunate. Her positions on the cases could have been made stronger by her “take” on existing facts on several key cases she discusses where she does not reveal to the reader certain conditions of the cases thus creating a different impression for the person who is not a legal buff.
This is a disservice to the everyday reader unfamiliar with the cases. It is disingenuous to present cases like that. But, this book is not about facts, it is about Ms. Pirro’s prosecutorial passions and why she prosecuted the cases the way she did.
D.A. With Attitude.
Couldn’t St. Martin's Press have been more forthcoming with the facts in TPP? Because TPP takes on added, altered meaning, in that Jeanine Pirro is still the District Attorney. TPP focuses sharply for citizens, criminals and the justice system how she approaches each case and whether or not to prosecute and how.
To Punish and Protect, the title alone, (itself a revealing play on words based on the motto “To Serve and Protect”), is testimony to the District Attorney’s mindset as she has formulated her office prosecution policies forward the last ten years.
What Crimes Not to Commit.
TPP makes perfectly clear that the individual makes a serious mistake if their crime falls into one of Ms. Pirro’s five mantras: violence against women, violence against children, hate crimes, teen drinking, and sexual offences against minors. Ms. Pirro quotes Voltaire on a frontispage: Justice is blind; but, fortunately for the sake of the welfare of society, she can often see through the bandage.
Ms. Pirro has no problem with that. She clearly sees through the bandage on every case and proves it in this book.
From her first words: “The office of district attorney is a battleground where the fight between good and evil unfolds each day. We see the ugliest side of life, the pain people go through for no reason. They didn’t do anything. They didn’t ask for it. Yet here they are living their personal nightmares. We cannot take away their pain or turn back time to undo the damage, but we can be the avengers. We can seek justice on their behalf.”
To her last words, on pages 215 to 216: “Justice is not only something we deliver to the criminal. It should also be something we do for the victim…Judges are provided with stacks of official information about defendants; they receive only selected bits about the victims. How can victims assume their rightful place in our priorities when decision makers know so little about them?”
She continues, and we truncate this statement to deliver her point: “I want our system to hear these voices. I want us to remember and to act, to bear responsibility and not make excuses. I want our system to hold criminals accountable while giving equal attention to finding justice for their victims… I remember their faces, mostly from autopsy photographs, their eyes reflecting the horror of their final moments…Now…all the others stand as silent witness, waiting to see if we will find the will and the courage to assure their suffering was not in vain.”
The Gospel
Ms. Pirro unfolds this Charlie Rose-style discourse, giving you her side of every case, selected because they had an impact on her and she still remembers them. The cases selected range from recent media-sensitive matters as the Alvarez-Hernandez death penalty trial to her explanations of her reasons for not prosecuting the Vascome death in Harrison, are discussed from Ms. Pirro’s point of view only, which appears to be why this book was written.
It is the Gospel According to Saint Jeanine.
Each case discussed is used to create a platform, an agenda which, with not too much imagination could be the cornerstones of a platform for an election campaign for Attorney General, Senator, or Governor.
The Commandments
The cornerstones are:
A Victim’s Justice System, providing counseling, services and lifelong follow-up support for victims of violent crimes;
Preemptive Bail in specific circumstances to prevent revenge by indicted criminals against complainants;
Stronger sentences for internet pedophiles;
Less faith in psychiatrists’ analysis of conditions of insanity as a defense; Mandatory jail time for violators of orders of protection, expansion of definitions of persons that could be jailed to include cohabitating couples and dating couples;
More death penalties, to prevent, as she alludes, additional murders in prison by incarcerated murderers, or possible paroles.
Dropping the Facts Changes the Perception
Earlier I alluded to St. Martin’s Press for apparently failing to at least factcheck issues surrounding Ms. Pirro’s case examples in this book that by her bringing them up needed (for her personal credibility) to be addressed. Knowing that Ms. Pirro, like any prosecutor worth their indictments, is making the best possible case for her “take” on issues, WPCNR suggests that her case studies would be made stronger by providing facts that would mitigate the obvious claims of her detractors. She does not do that.
Did her “collaborators” advise her of this pitfall? At least St. Martins Press editors should have tried to get Ms. Pirro to address the issues everyone is talking about on certain cases, as well as share the credit for the advancement of these issues she cares about. Maybe they did and were overruled. All the facts would have made TPP a stronger book.
Jeanine of Arc on Domestic Violence. Carl Who?
Some examples: Ms. Pirro emerges in this book as (and all but claims the title of ) “Jeanine of Arc on Women’s Domestic Violence Issues”. She makes no mention that Westchester D.A.,Carl Vergari founded the Domestic Violence Unit, and was responsible for applying for funding of one of four Domestic Violence Prosecution Units in the country.
She does not mention him as the man (Vergari) who hired her as Assistant District Attorney in the first place in 1973, nor any commentary of what it was like working with him and the contributions he may have made to her career.
Her oblique dismissal of Mr. Vergari hurts the book. Ignoring her association with him, robs her of the cache his reputation would lend her own stature as a worthy successor who advanced his legacy strongly, a far more politically merchandisable position.
Denies Vergari Twice
She does this twice. She seems to imply to the reader that Mr. Vergari created the Domestic Violence Unit as a politically correct office and gave it no respect in this passage on page 55: “In 1978, when the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration made federal money available for pilot Domestic Violence Prosecution Units, the Westchester County DA’s office bid for the grant. We were one of four offices in the entire country approved for the project, and I became chief of the office, with three aides and a criminal investigator...In my boss’s (Vergari’s) opinion, 90 percent of our work was social services. His attitude pervaded our office and the courts. Time and again, I’d go to court and judges would bark at me, Why don’t you get a real case, Ms. Pirro? Or, they’d throw the case out with an admonishment to stop wasting the court’s time.”
When the federal government discontinued funding the unit, Ms. Pirro gives the reader the impression she was the sole person who arranged funding that kept the County Domestic Violence Unit alive in this manner on page 64: “After the federal grant money for our Domestic Violence Unit dried up we had to battle to keep the unit in the budget every single year. Year after year, we were cut out of the budget. We were disposable. To stay alive, I learned to galvanize support from women’s groups and individuals who cared about our mission.”
In fairness to Ms. Pirro, an editor has to check for false impressions, unintended meanings, inconsistencies and unintentional meanings, and to say to their author, “Do you really want to say that? Was this really the way it was? That’s really whacking Carl?”
Riding Into a Box Canyon.
Another example of fact omission is her discussion of the killing of Charles Campbell at the Venice Deli in Dobbs Ferry on October 3, 1996, over a parking place by off duty New York City police officer, Richard D. DiGuglielmo. In her discussion of the case, she describes Campbell as a person who “wasn’t violent. He wasn’t crazy…” and in another statement, she writes , “Everyone who knew Charles agreed that he had a good attitude and was well liked…” and this endorsement of his character: “He had a great reputation there (St. Christopher’s-Jennie Clarson Child Care Home for troubled teenagers), always putting in extra hours off the books.” Campbell was working for the Department of Public Works in White Plains at the time he was killed.
What Ms. Pirro does not tell the reader is that Charles Campbell had an extensive arrest record prior to his turning over a new leaf. He was arrested in Westchester County by the Mount Pleasant Police Department on September 4, 1983 for a felony: illegal possession of stolen property (stolen credit cards) and was convicted and sentenced and served six months for this offense on April 16, 1985.
Other arrests by Westchester County Police Departments include three by the Greenburg Police Department: Assault with a Weapon, November 30, 1987; four arrests by the Elmsford Police Department, for Public Lewdness, December 10, 1984; Witness Tampering, November 19, 1984; Assault/P.I. on July 11, 1984, and Petit Larceny on February 2, 1977 when he was 18. In Baltimore, he was arrested for theft of credit cards in 1983. The Ardsley Police Department arrested him for Unlawful Use of a Credit card on July 29, 1983. The Mount Vernon Police Department charged him with Intent to Defraud August 25, 1983.
Failure to acknowledge this in discussion of a case creates a false impression of Mr. Campbell to the reader. Ms. Pirro could have handled this uncomfortable history of Mr. Campbell by saying very simply, though Mr. Campbell had been in trouble with the law previously, he had turned his life around.
That’s what an editor does for an author, he or she prevents you from riding up into a box canyon. An editor has to be more than an advocate to deliver your message, he or she has to make sure you deliver it with credibility by dealing with the complete picture. TPP does not do that in these key cases.
Pirro uses her conviction of DiGuglielmo to make the case for her vigorous prosecution of hate crimes, but to paint a picture of Charles Campbell as a boy scout is to overlook his extensive arrest record.
The Alvarez-Hernandez Case
In her most recent high profile prosecution, the Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez triple murder case in which she sought the death penalty, the book lets her down there, too, by ignoring something a simple fact check would reveal. Pirro goes through this case with gruesome detail, which I think is a good thing.
Most of her discussion on this case centered on the defense portrayal of Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez as being intoxicated and had not known what he was doing, and the media portrayal seeming to have “a sympathetic attitude taken towards the alleged murderer.” In an uncompromising tone, Ms. Pirro writes: “They didn’t write much about four-year-old Ashley, who was eviscerated by this man and left with her guts spilling out of her body. They didn’t write all that much about seven-year-old William either, whose blood and remains were splattered on the walls next to his bunk bed. They hardly ever mentioned Vincent, who witnessed this horror show and almost died. Or about the mother, Patricia, only twenty-eight years old, who was forced to watch her children die just before her own life was ended with a final plunge of the knife.”
I quote this paragraph to show you the style of the book: Ms. Pirro writes about perceptions of each case, and the reality of the crime itself, using her knowledge of the crime scenes and her emotions at what she saw. The naïve reader has no choice but to buy the Pirro “take.” She says in her own words, “So, yes, people may say they want justice. Some of them may want revenge. But too often a discreet veil is drawn over the gruesome reality of the crime.”
Ms. Pirro lifts that veil.
She provides her reasoning for her proceeding ahead with the death penalty on this case that fits her vision of her mission, and does so in each of the cases she discusses. This appears to assure the reader she is on the victim’s side and against the criminal who is coddled, in her opinion, by the judiciary, defense attorneys, and criminal friendly statutes.
An example of this technique is her explanation of why she refused to take a plea bargain from the Alvarez-Hernandez defense for life imprison without parole: “For me the call wasn’t so simple. I had to consider not only what was just for the victims, but what was best for the community. There is a naïve supposition that once we lock up a brutal murderer that his reign of terror is finally over. That is not true. Murderers kill while in prison, too. There are inmate-on-inmate killings. There are inmate-on-officer killings. Violent criminals don’t become gentle once they’re imprisoned.”
She uses this case to show her disdain and outright disgust with the judiciary. She roasts Judge Kenneth Lange for not sending the jury back for more deliberation on the death penalty, writing, “That’s not quite right. New York law recognizes the possibility that jurors may fail to reach unanimity on the sentence of death versus life without parole. Yet it assumes that the jurors will be given ample opportunity to try. Was one day an ample opportunity? Had it not been the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, would it have been considered ample?”
Here is where a factchecker might have prevented a misconception. As reported by WPCNR, and The Journal News, the jury supported 18 of 24 mitigators submitted by the defense as reasons not to impose the death penalty and added a 25th mitigator they created themselves during deliberations and came to agreement on among themselves, that Mr. Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez was 22 compared to Patricia Torres age of 28.
Not disclosing this fact that the jury was dead against the death penalty by their own verdict on the sentencing, leaves the reader to ask the question, “Well how could that Judge not have had them deliberate more?” Dropping the jury’s decision in its entirety on sentencing makes it easy for the unfamiliar reader to say, “She’s absolutely right.” When the jury was not undecided at all, they were committed to life.
Viscome Silence.
Another editorial gaffe, involves Ms. Pirro’s discussion of the Viscome Death Case in her own community.
She also does not take on the common gossip in Westchester surrounding this case. Here she is, discussing the very case she has been sharply criticized on, and does not unequivocably deny with evidence, scurrilous rumors about the nature of the party, what teenagers were present, and allegations about the host of the party. Why she did not destroy this gossip with the real facts is a mystery.
Her discussion of Viscome’s death is interesting in light of the fact she explains the subtleties of why she could not, in her opinion, prosecute teens other than Rukaj.
A Laundry List of Things Wrong with the Law
Ms. Pirro rips off that veil on cases from sexual abuse to spousal murders and advocates, advocates, advocates. You will learn the sordid realities of pedophile crimes, and why they are so hard to prosecute under present law, the proliferation of internet crime and why Ms. Pirro’s Internet Sting Operation does not constitute “entrapment;” Each case serves to illustrate Ms. Pirro’s perception of the problems in getting convictions and protecting victims.
Her attitude: “Every day I face barriers, not just from criminals, but from the system, which prevent me from doing my job. Many laws have nothing whatsoever to do with making our communities safer, protecting our children, reducing violence, or getting predators off the streets. They are designed to protect defendants, but have little to offer to the victims of crime. I believe this imbalance must be remedied.”
The cases she describes in TPP take you inside domestic violence crimes, child abuse situations, crimes against the elderly. Seeing these crimes through Pirro’s eyes, understanding the laws and circumstances that have to be met for a successful prosecution offers insights as to what motivates Ms. Pirro and her colleagues.
