Yesterday Marty's lawyers filed their final papers on the nearly two dozen witnesses and seven months of new evidence heard before Judge Stephen Braslow in Suffolk County Court. But it's not the last word on the case, as there is unfinished business to be dealt with, most notably Joey "Guns" Creedon's son's stunning affidavit, in which he says his father confessed to the Tankleff murders in detail. That affidavit was filed with the court along with a separate motion to vacate Marty's conviction or to reopen the hearing, so it awaits the DA's response, due tomorrow, and then the judge's ruling.
Also yesterday, the DA asked the judge not to allow statements from the original jurors as to whether the new evidence would likely have persuaded them to reach a different verdict, the core question in this entire exercise. This was odd because the defense's motion made no reference to the jurors. Which all leads one to presume, one, that someone might be contacting the jurors and asking them the $500,000 question, and two, that the DA is frightened at what some jurors might say.
Also of note is that the defense had to file a motion yesterday to pry Arlene Tankleff's fingernail clippings out of the DA's hands in order to conduct routine DNA tests. If the clippings are still in the DA's possession, as they ought to be, and if the DA is so confident they have the right man locked up, why the resistance?
As for yesterday's brief, it begins with District Attorney Thomas Spota's own words, from his website:
"Recognizing that '[t]he duty of a prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict,' the web site for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office proudly proclaims its promise to 'enforce the law with temperance and without malice, to seek truth and not victims, to serve the law and not fractional purposes and to approach these tasks with humility and respect'....Sadly, in the case of the People v. Martin H. Tankleff, the DA has failed miserably. Rather than seek the truth, the DA has taken the position that it has no duty to investigate substantial evidence demonstrating that an innocent man sits in prison while violent murderers remain free. Rather than approaching new evidence that Mr. Tankleff was wrongly prosecuted with humility and respect, the DA has engaged in name calling, heaping scorn on citizens who have come forward to testify about their knowledge of these crimes."
The name-calling reference leads one back not only to ADA Lato's reference to Tankleff witnesses in general as "misfits," but also to the testimony of Joseph Graydon, who had come forward after seeing news reports on the Tankleff case, stating that he had gone on a "mis-hit" with Joey "Guns" Creedon on Seymour Tankleff. Graydon also testified that when he called the DA's office to provide his information, he was ignored, disrespected and hung up on. Graydon was not nearly as disrespectful to the court as Peter Kent, but Graydon, unlike Kent, was not the DA's witness. Graydon, who said he had reformed, appeared to throw Lato off his game during cross examination, with statements such as "Please ask me the right questions" and "I'm more scared of you people than I am of Joey Creedon," which may be what led Lato to call Graydon in his brief "a drug using, gambling-addicted blowhard." In yesterday's brief, Marty's lawyers wrote:
"Adding to the adage that if you do not have the facts, argue the law and if you do not have the law, argue the facts, the DA demonstrates that if you have neither, engage in sophomoric adolescent name calling.
"If the DA is frustrated with the lack of respect that certain members of the public (including the victims of the Tankleff murders--the family members) have given to the DA with respect to this case, the DA need look no further than its own conduct to ascertain the reason. It is sad that the DA has become so personally vested in this matter that it has strayed so far from fulfilling its mandate to see justice served."
Perhaps even more disturbing than the DA's disparaging citizens for doing their duty and coming forward with information is the DA's coddling of violent felons. Peter Kent was the DA's witness, and Creedon might as well have been. At the hearing, Creedon denied ever having spoken with Jerry Steuerman, despite having signed an affidavit with Marty's original lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, that he had spoken with Jerry Steuerman about Steuerman's request that Creedon cut out Marty Tankleff's tongue.
On the question of whom to believe, the DA sides with Creedon over Gottlieb. From yesterday's brief:
"The DA's response to Mr. Gottlieb's testimony is to suggest to the Court that in assessing the respective credibility of Mr. Gottlieb, an officer of the Court, and Joey "Guns" Creedon, a career violent felon, the Court should resolve the disputed testimony in favor of Creedon....In making this remarkable suggestion, the DA simply ignores the fact that Mr. Gottlieb's recollections are supported by his contemporaneous notes, which were introduced into evidence. The DA also asks the Court to conclude that Creedon is telling the truth and that Mr. Gottlieb perjured himself, in spite of the fact that the DA has implicitly recognized that Creedon separately perjured himself at the 440 hearing by claiming that he has never told anyone that he was involved in the Tankleff murders."
Yesterday Lato told Newsday, "Everything that needed to be said in this case and everything that didn't need to be said has been said. There's nothing left to say." But there is. We eagerly await what the DA has to say about what the brave 17-year-old son of Joey "Guns" Creedon had to say about his father.
Vanessa bought the heat in
Posted by: oqcirkyvahjy | October 22, 2008 at 11:38 PM
He managed to
Posted by: swibyw | January 23, 2009 at 10:31 PM