With no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Marty Tankleff was convicted in 1990 based on the testimony of Detective James McCready, who wrote Marty's unfinished, unsigned, recanted "confession" after lying to the traumatized teenager that his father had come out of his coma to identify Marty as the attacker. While the Tankleff defense contended that it was Jerry Steuerman, Seymour Tankleff's business partner, who was behind the murders, Detective McCready had from the beginning not only refused to consider Steuerman a suspect but had endorsed Steuerman's innocence. So in cross examination of McCready at trial, the defense tried to establish whether McCready's treatment of Steuerman could have been based on the two having known each other from before the Tankleff murders.
Q: Have you ever met Jerry Steuerman?
A: No sir, I did not.
Q: Did you know anything about Jerry Steuerman?
A: Not at that point, sir, no, sir.
Q: Did you know anything about his background?
A: No, sir, not at that point, sir.
Q: Did you know anything about his business relationships with other individuals other than Seymour Tankleff before he mentioned it?
A: Not at that point. I didn’t know one thing about Jerry Steuerman at that point.
Q: Did you have any background data on Jerry Steuerman or the people who he does business with?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Did you know anything about Jerry Steuerman’s children or his family?
A: Absolutely not, sir.
Just the year before this testimony, the New York State Commission of Investigation had released its scathing report on corruption in the Suffolk County police department and district attorney's office. Among its findings was that Detective McCready had perjured himself in a previous murder trial (the Diaz case). The lawyer who appeared for McCready and publicly defended him was Thomas Spota, now the district attorney of Suffolk County. (Spota himself was criticized by the Commission, for "conflicts and interrelationships" in connection with an alleged "kick-back scheme.")
We now know, based on new evidence introduced at Marty's recent hearing, that Detective McCready may have once again perjured himself in the above testimony. A restaurant owner recently testified that he repeatedly saw McCready together with Steuerman at the bagel stores prior to the Tankleff murders, and that McCready told him he did construction work on the side for Steuerman.
In 1991, less than five months after Marty Tankleff was sentenced, Detective McCready was accused of assault and robbery for allegedly beating a man and stripping him naked outside a bar on St. Patrick’s Day. Spota successfully defended McCready, who, ironically, was acquitted based in large part on the judge's ruling suppressing statements improperly obtained by the police.
[Detective McCready and his lawyer Thomas Spota following McCready's acquittal on assault charges.]
And that's not the half of it. District Attorney Spota also has numerous strong ties to another major figure in the case: Jerry Steuerman. Spota's former law partner (it has not been clearly documented whether it was a current or former partner at the time) had
represented both Jerry Steuerman and his son Todd Steuerman in
the late 80s. Another of Spota's former partners, Timothy Mazzei, was the first ADA on the Tankleff case. Most intriguing is information that Spota failed to disclose until defense investigator Jay Salpeter was about to uncover it: Spota's own small law firm had represented Todd Steuerman in the early 80s for selling cocaine out of his father's bagel store, to which Todd pled guilty. This late revelation took on added significance in light of other evidence brought out during the hearing--that Todd Steuerman's drug enforcer, Joey "Guns" Creedon, had told numerous people over the years that he was involved in the Tankleff murders, and that cops may have been paid off to look the other way as drugs were sold out of the bagel store (the last bit according to a confidential defense witness, a friend of Todd Steuerman's who claims to have been introduced by Jerry to McCready--as one of his card playing buddies--in the bagel store).
Yet, Spota has refused to recuse himself, despite having done so in, for example, the Lizzie Grubman case, in which an investigator formally employed by Grubman's lawyer joined the Suffolk County DA's office, a situation far less sticky than the web of conflicts in the Tankleff case.
In a motion to the court, Tankleff's lawyers argued that for a fair hearing to be conducted, Spota and his office must be disqualified:
This motion squarely presents this Court with a choice between allowing Martin Tankleff to receive a fair hearing conducted by an independent prosecutor or presiding over a proceeding that is tainted by a prosecutor whose loyalties are split between his oath of office to seek justice and his obligation to protect a former client who may have contributed to the wrongful convictions.
Professor Roy D. Simon Jr., of Hofstra University, widely considered a leading expert on legal ethics, wrote in an affirmation submitted to the court:
In sum, Mr. Spota's duty of confidentiality to his former clients makes it impossible for him to investigate them thoroughly himself. In a serious investigation of the newly discovered evidence about the Tankleff murders, Mr. Spota would be acting materially adverse to the interests of all three of his former clients (Detective McCready, Todd Steuerman, and Jerry Steuerman) in a matter substantially related to the former representations without their informed consent, and DR 5-108(A) prohibits him from doing so. But if Mr. Spota does not seriously investigate the newly discovered evidence, the failure will create an appearance of impropriety - an appearance that Mr. Spota is more concerned about protecting his former clients than about securing justice on behalf of the People. He thus has a disqualifying conflict of interest that is imputed to the entire Suffolk County DA's Office.
Suffolk County Judge Stephen Braslow denied the disqualification motion. Most curious was a glaring omission in the ruling. In a case in which there has been abundant evidence presented that Todd Steuerman's drug enforcer, Joey "Guns" Creedon, was involved in the murders on the orders of Jerry Steurman (not to mention the episode in which Todd Steuerman allegedly shot Creedon for refusing to cut out Marty's tongue at Jerry Steuerman's request), inexplicably there was no mention whatsoever in the ruling of Spota's firm's representation of Todd for selling cocaine out of the bagel stores in the early 80s. At the defense's request, Judge Braslow did finally address the matter in a terse follow-up ruling in which he stated there was no conflict in that instance for the same reason there was no conflict in Spota's former partner having represented the Steuermans in the late 80s. However, in the latter instance, the judge saw no conflict based on Spota's undocumented word, relayed through his ADA, that Spota and his partner had separated months before the representation. Aside from simply taking Spota at his word, this ignores the fact that it was Spota's own small law firm that represented Todd on the drug-sale charge.
Marty's lawyers have filed a renewed disqualification motion based on yet more new evidence revealed at the hearing, including testimony corroborating the defense's contention that the DA intimidated or induced a key witness, Brian Scott Glass, to change his testimony. And it was revealed that the DA's investigator, Walter Warkenthien, a former colleague of Detective McCready's assigned to the Tankleff case by Spota even before the ADA was assigned, reports directly to Spota to this day, despite Spota's claim that he had walled himself off from the case.
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