Evil, racist rightwingers—i.e., colleagues of mine—have been saying terrible things about Federal Court of Appeals judge and Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, whose Senate confirmation hearings begin on July 13.
But Judge Sotomayor has ardent defenders—most prominently, Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. Morgenthau hired Sotomayor to her first, formative, professional job, as a prosecutor in his office in 1979, before she had even graduated from Yale Law School. She stayed there until 1984.
"Barack Obama" and the MSM apparently believe that Morgenthau, regularly described as "legendary" and"iconic", can make the damning evidence against Sotomayor, and logic itself, disappear. He has placed apologias for her in the Wall Street Journal and New York's Daily News. For example:
"No sooner had President Obama announced his nomination of Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor than conservative partisans began calling for her defeat. These so-called pundits have pronounced her a 'radical,' an 'activist,' part of the 'far left,' an 'affirmative action case' and, most astoundingly, a 'racist.' We were not long left in suspense as to whether this administration's judicial nominees can expect to be vetted with objectivity and due civility….
"To be sure, she is in favor of civil rights, in the sense that she believes there should be fair treatment for all.But that is, of course, the law. And she understands poverty, and does seem willing to accept government action that provides a safety net to the poor. But that is not exactly 'radical.'
"Most importantly, I am astonished that she has been disparaged as an 'affirmative action' beneficiary. Whatever position one takes on affirmative action, it is simply unreasonable, if not racist, so to impugn this individual. She may be a woman, and she may be a Latina. But Sonia Sotomayor possesses an abundance of wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character. Sotomayor is where she is today because of her talent. Those who insinuate otherwise don't know her, or simply paint her as they do for political reasons having nothing to do with the truth." [Those labeling Sonia Sotomayor a radical don't know her at all by Robert Morgenthau, Daily News, May 28th, 2009.]
In fact, of course, Sonia Sotomayor has said of herself, "I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby."
So who is Robert Morgenthau and what does his"legendary" and "iconic" tenure as Manhattan District Attorney say about Sotomayor's likely conduct on the court?
He was born into incredible privilege. His father Henry was FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, author of the notorious "Morgenthau Plan" under which Germany would have been partitioned and deindustrialized after World War II. He was first elected Manhattan DA in 1974, just after the departure, after two ruinous terms, of aristocratic liberal Mayor John V. Lindsay. Morgenthau picked up Lindsay's baton. He turns 90 on July 31 and will retire at the end of 2010
Morgenthau is the model for the original DA on Law & Order, the long-running, award-winning TV drama that claims todramatize crimes "ripped from the headlines."Significantly, in view of Morgenthau's behaviour, the show's actual m.o. is to take true crimes committed by blacks against whites and Asians, but portray the criminals as white, and to present "hate crimes" committed by "racist whites"that never happened.
Prior to Morgenthau's present demagoguery, my judgment of him had four bases:
His 1984-1987 handling of the Bernard Goetz case;
his "evolving" handling of the Central Park Jogger case from 1989-2002;
the professional experiences of a criminal defense attorney friend,
my own experiences with Morgenthau's office as a crime victim.
From 1984-1987, Morgenthau pursued a vindictive prosecution against Bernard Goetz. Goetz was a Jew working in electronics who,at Christmastime, 1984, had defended himself against four 18 and 19-year-old black men attempting to rob him at midday in a subway car. Goetz, who had previously been mugged three times, and been brutally beaten the last time, shot each of the would-be robbers once.
While seeking to put Goetz away for 30 years for attempted murder and illegal gun possession, Morgenthau treated the would-be muggers, all hardened thugs who had criminal records and were wanted on outstanding warrants, as if they were crime victims. He used the media to spread lies, claiming that Goetz was a "racist" who had been looking for trouble, and who had shot one of the muggers a second time. The media called Goetz "the subway vigilante."
Grand juries almost always follow prosecutors' lead. But the first grand jury refused to indict Goetz for attempted murder, as Morgenthau sought, and only indicted him for illegal possession of a firearm. So Morgenthau empaneled a second grand jury, which indicted Goetz for attempted murder.
In 1987, the jury in Goetz' criminal case acquitted him of the charge of attempted murder, but convicted him of illegal possession of an unlicensed handgun, and sentenced him to one year in prison. He served eight months. In 1996, a Bronx jury—notorious for their racial bias—awarded one of the would-be muggers a judgment of $43 million, in a civil suit against Goetz.
All of the four men would later admit that they had intended on mugging Goetz.
On April 19, 1989, a mob of 32-40 teenaged boys—predominantly black, the rest Hispanic—set out for a night of mayhem terrorizing whites in Central Park. They brutalized at least a dozen whites, most obscenely the woman who for years would be known as "The Central Park Jogger."
A subgroup of from eight to 15 boys variously bludgeoned, punched, stomped, hit with rocks, and ripped the flesh of their 5'4," 105-lb. victim from head to toe; sexually fondled her; stripped her and tied her up with her clothes; sodomized her; and at least one raped her.
Hours before police would learn of the attack on The Jogger, they responded to calls that all hell was breaking loose in the park. In separate squad cars, black teenagers Kevin Richardson, 14, Antron McCray, 15, and Clarence Thomas, 14, told baffled officers that they knew who had committed "the murder", and where the weapon had been stashed.
At that point, only the attackers had such knowledge.
When two men found The Jogger in a ravine, she had a fractured skull, had lost 75 percent of her blood, and was pronounced DOA. Few of her doctors thought she'd survive. One "exploded" eye hung out of its socket; afriend could not physically identify her. She remained in a coma for 12 days. Her sociopathic attackers caused brain damage, leaving her with lifelong balance and coordination problems, a lost sense of smell, decreased mental abilities, and having to re-learn such basic tasks as "rolling over, telling time, buttoning her blouse or identifying simple objects."
Four of the nine boys initially arrested—Richardson, McCray, Raymond Santana, 14, and Kharey Wise, 16—made voluntary, videotaped confessions, the three under 16 in the presence of a parent or guardian. Each denied having raped The Jogger, but charged accomplices with having done so. The four all identified 15-year-old Yusuf Salaam as having brought down The Jogger with a blow to the head from a metal pipe. Salaam likewise confessed to having struck that blow, and a second to the victim's ribs, but refused to make an official signed or videotaped confession.
At the time, police announced that additional attackers remained at large, and that none of the arrestees' DNA matched the semen evidence.
A racist hate campaign immediately swung into action—against the victim!
Working with black nationalist activists such as Al Sharpton, Elombe Brath, and Bill Perkins, the city's black weeklies, theAmsterdam News and City Sun, promoted the fantasy that the confessed assailants were the Scottsboro Boysreincarnated: "Innocent" boys from "good homes," who had been snatched up by racist police, based solely on the color of their skin.
Violating a long-standing, unofficial rule against revealing the names of sex crime victims, for over a year the two weeklies obsessively repeated the victim's name in every issue: Patricia Meili. (Actually, she went by "Trisha.")
Outside the courthouse, black supremacists screamed,"The boyfriend did it!" "She did it herself!" and when the limping victim appeared, "Whore!" and "Slut!"
New York's white-owned media largely suppressed coverage of the hate campaign.
One has to understand that black supremacists consider brutalizing whites virtuous behavior; the more gruesome, the better. Their reflexive assertions in such cases that blacks were "framed"are smoke-screens; for them, there is no such thing as black-on-white "crime."
In two trials, marked by constant intimidation and disruptions, and feckless behavior by city officials, McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise were tried and convicted of most charges in 1990.
Afterwards, attorneys for three of the defendants (see also here) remarked that mounting an effective defense had been rendered impossible by the convicts' self-incriminating statements—including their trial testimony—and because an alternative theory of where they were in the park would have implicated them in other felonies.
Then the convicts then got confessors' remorse. The black agitators and their MSM henchmen promoted the Big Lie, whereby the confessions had been coerced, and the convicts were innocent.
In a 1992 jailhouse interview on 60 Minutes, Salaam suggested that Meili was "faking" her injuries, and insisted as a Muslim, he was incapable of committing crimes. (!)
In 2002, after the statute of limitations for the Central Park attacks had passed, delusional psychotic Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist already serving a 33 1/3 years-to-life sentence in the same prison as Kharey Wise, announced that he had "found God"—something that he had been saying for 11 years—and that he alone had attacked Trisha Meili.
The unidentified sperm proved to be Reyes'. Otherwise, his story was bunkum. The victim's doctors denied that the then slightly built, 5'8," 18-year-old had without help dragged a remarkably fit if petite woman, fighting for her life, 290 feet; and had without accomplices so tortured and harmed her.
Reyes had either found and raped the unconscious Meili after the wolf pack had moved on to other victims, or had been a part of it. At the time, some of the boys had said they'd held the victim down, while a "Tony" raped her. Reyes' street name was "Tony."
Morgenthau took Reyes' entire story on faith, and refused to permit him to be cross-examined in a court of law.
(At the time Reyes made his statement, he was serving in the same prison as Kharey Wise, who by then had become"a very powerful Muslim leader during his 11 years in prison." Police believed that "Reyes made the confession to score points with Wise… So he does Wise a favor and gets himself major protection in state prison.") [Why Reyes Admitted Rape, By Andy Geller And Murray Weiss, New York Post, December 5, 2002]
After promising "a fair, impartial and complete" review of the case, Morgenthau instead joined the MSM inpromoting the black supremacist narrative, after airbrushing the obvious racist insanity out of it. The story Morgenthau now peddled could have been a Law & Order script.
Twisting the law, history, and logic into a pretzel on behalf of the convicts, Morgenthau acted as if there were new exculpatory evidence, when there was none; as if the confessions had been ruled inadmissible, when they had in fact withstood all legal challenges; and asserted that it was the prosecutor's (as opposed to defense counsel's) job to concoct an exculpatory, alternative narrative though, like a dumb street hood, he apparently could not come up with one matching the known facts. No matter; the New York Times covered for him.
In December, 2002, Morgenthau requested state Justice Charles Tejada to "vacate" the already served sentences, both for the attack on Meili and for other assaults that night—thus implying that the five convicts had been railroaded. Tejada complied.
Atypical of the media, legendary NYPD detective Mike Sheehan, by then a Fox 5 News reporter said, "I'm shocked at Morgenthau. This shows they have no respect for us and no respect for the victims in this case."
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and several of the over 30 detectives who had originally worked the case, charged that Morgenthau's office, led by ADA Nancy E. Ryan, had sabotaged the investigation, by:
Withholding new DNA tests and prison records;
Refusing to interview the prosecutors and lead detectives from the original case;
Forbidding the detectives from consulting their by now 13-year-old notes, when attempting to interrogate convicts in prison;
Forbidding detectives from administering a polygraph examination to Reyes;
Interrupting detectives whenever they asked Reyes questions in jail; and
Going so far as to telephone the lawyers of Reyes' fellow inmates, directing them to advise their clients to refuse to cooperate with detectives.
If Kelly and the detectives' charges are true—and they seem plausible to me—Morgenthau and his aides committed the felony, conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Today, the indignant, "innocent victims" seek to cash in, to the tune of $250 million, via the ultimate frivolous lawsuit.
If they win, they should cut Morgenthau in. He's earned it.
The criminal defense attorney's tale
A criminal defense attorney friend of mine argues that it is impossible for white male victims of black racial attacks to get justice from Morgenthau's office. Instead, it aggressively prosecutes the victims, while treating the racist black attackers as if they were the victims. I know first-hand what my friend is talking about
Between 1991 and 1999, I had five encounters with Morgenthau's office as a victim of racially-targeted attacks by blacks and Hispanics. (Since 1999, I have avoided Manhattan like the plague.)
Morgenthau's office always "disappeared" the cases against my attackers, no matter how strong they were: Witnesses (i.e. other than me) having called the police, witnesses independently corroborating my stories, my bloody defensive wound, my broken nose, the judgment of an NYPD crime scene captain supporting me, etc.
The only honest answers I ever got from Morgenthau's Assistant District Attorneys were from the white man and woman who, in different cases where I had been attacked on the subway, admitted to never riding the subway late at night. Morgenthau's ADAs take taxis at night because they are terrified of blacks andHispanic criminals—but unlike him, don't have their own armed NYPD driver-bodyguards.
Morgenthau's ADAs went from letting my attackers walk to accusing me of racially targeting innocent minorities for false arrests, while making veiled threats of having me arrested if I continued; to aggressively prosecuting me for defending myself. Already in 1993, I was grilled in a bizarre "interview" by one of his ADAs, which closely resembled federal prosecutors' approach against whites whom they deem dangerous white supremacists. The white female ADA was keen to know my personal business and views, but indifferent to the attempted mugging that I had fought off.
To supplement Peter Brimelow's definition of a "racist", for Robert Morgenthau and his staff, a "racist" is any heterosexual white man who can't afford taxi fare home late at night.
John Lindsay pioneered the alliance of wealthy, white leftists andcriminal blacks and Hispanics waging war on working-class and middle-class whites.
Morgenthau perpetuated Lindsay's perfidy. For whatever reason, he has presided over an era of politicized, racialized law enforcement in Manhattan.
Morgenthau's protégé will work to enshrine the same evil on the Supreme Court.
Nicholas Stix [email him] lives in New York City, which he views from the perspective of its public transport system, experienced in his career as an educator. His weekly column appears at Men's News Daily and many other Web sites. He has also written for Middle American News, the New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Chronicles, Ideas on Liberty and the Weekly Standard. He maintains two blogs: A Different Drummer and Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.
