In recent months, the politics sections of New York papers have read more like Hollywood screenplays: elected officials wearing secret wires, scheming to bribe their way onto their ballot, engaging in shady business dealings.
It’s hard not to notice that virtually all these alleged crimes have been prosecuted in federal, not state courts, and by U.S. attorneys, not district attorneys.
It is hard, Cy. All these great crimes happening in the cesspool that is New York City politics and you, poor Cy, left out in the cold. No headlines. No interviews. No fawning admiration of hot young official corruption groupies.
But then, it's not like these nasty politicians aren't being caught, aren't being prosecuted. They are. And they are investigated and prosecuted by an entity from a jurisdiction without inherent conflicts, who won't suffer from the unintended consequences of relying on the colleagues of your targets, maybe even the targets themselves, for funding or changes to law.
Cy wants to change this. He's got ideas that will put him in the thick of things, and more importantly, in the headlines.
To strengthen New York’s weak state corruption and procedure laws, Gov. Cuomo has proposed the Public Trust Act. It’s a much-needed first step to give local prosecutors the right tools to crack down on public corruption. For one thing, it finally gives teeth to New York’s public bribery laws, which unlike our other bribery statutes — sports, commercial and labor — require either a mutual agreement between the parties or that the person giving the bribe believes that the public servant will be influenced by a bribe offer. Under the governor’s proposal, the offer of a bribe could be treated as seriously as the completion of a bribe. Do we really want it to be harder to prove a case against a crooked politician than a boxer? Well, that's a tough question when you ask it that way, but it's not nearly as tough when the question isn't so loaded. After all, they aren't "crooked politicians" is they didn't commit a crime, and since it's not a crime, they're kinda just ordinary politicians who you think ought to be called crooked.
But the core of the problem makes the question far harder. Politicians survive on campaign contributions. It is a terrible idea, but that's the way our society handles elections. We simultaneously demand these guys run for office all the time, and it takes buckaroos to buy air time and print up four color brochures. Anyone who wants to win an election, even incumbents, needs money to do so, and they have to get that money from somewhere.
Sure, their friends and family give some up, but that's not enough to pay for dry cleaning. No, they depend on the only people who give a damn whether they're elected or not, the people who can benefit from their holding office. And so they pander, smile and kiss the delightful butts of the very people who want something from them. It sucks. It looks awful. But it doesn't make them crooked unless there is a quid pro quo for the cash. For the record, boxers don't need to be elected.
While a change in the law might well snag some bad dudes (and dudettes), it will also snag a whole bunch of people trying hard to get elected and doing nothing any more wrong than anybody else. It would give you the ability to make a case against them, except they wouldn't be criminals. Just politicians doing what they have to do in the normal scheme of politics. And it would put it into your hands to decide whether to go after them anyway.
With all that power, people in Albany would shake when you walked up to them to ask for a little more funding, a new law every now and then. They would quiver. They would always take your phone calls, Cy, because you would have the power to destroy their careers, if not their lives. That's a lot of power, Cy. Almost as much as Morgenthau.
Unseemly, Cy? This core tradition of New York criminal law, that's been with us since the beginning, and to which New York, a state that professes a belief in the Constitution that surpasses that of some of those southern states where cousins regularly marry. Do you want cousins to marry, Cy? When that happens, it completely screws up DNA identification, as everybody's starts to look alike.The bill also would end New York’s unseemly practice of giving a complete transactional immunity “bath” to witnesses who appear before grand juries in cases of misconduct in public office and government fraud. This would give state prosecutors a tool that our counterparts in other states and the federal government have had for decades — though narrowly tailored to apply only to the problem at hand.
When a witness is compelled to appear before the grand jury in New York, they receive transaction immunity, not just use immunity as the feds enjoy. Your "bath" is New York's constitutional protection, Cy. You can't make your case without forcing people into the Star Chamber? There is no due process in the grand jury, as our great (if somewhat sad) former Chief Judge explained when it comes to Criminal Possession of a Ham Sandwich in the First Degree. And you want to turn New York into some backwater, giving away our heritage for a quick headline, Cy. How sad.
And, recognizing the seriousness of fraud against the public, the act also creates the crime of “corrupting the government,” which would apply to ongoing schemes to defraud the state or local government, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a public servant.
These provisions are a great way to get change rolling at a time when New Yorkers are rightfully demanding more vigorous oversight of elected officials.
Pondering what must be an epidemic of regular citizens "corrupting the government," since it demands a new law to prevent it, it's hard to imagine who these people are that they are responsible for taking the pristine public servants of Albany's chambers and turning them into crooks. If this is happening at such a significant pace that a new crime is needed, then they must be incredibly powerful people to take the fine politicians of the Empire State and twist them into corrupt pretzels. No wonder New Yorkers are "rightfully demanding" more vigorous oversight of elected officials.
But you, Cy, are an elected official too. And oversight is certainly a good thing, but you aren't asking for oversight. You are asking for new crimes and the end of historic protections. Are New Yorkers "rightfully demanding" that?
Some are, Cy. And if you think yourself worthy of the vast power such changes will put into your hands, the power to make Senators and Legislators bow to you and fear your watchful eye, you can prove it by cleaning your own house first, Cy. There's that unconstitutional stop and frisk thing you've been ignoring. Or the Brady thing. Or covering up for bad cops thing. You can stop it with a snap of your fingers right now.
New Yorkers are rightfully demanding it. Don't disappoint them, Cy.
See? Already you're name is showing up on the boob tube. Imagine what would happen if you cleaned up your own mess.
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Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/06/21/ny-district-attorney-cy-vance-what-about-me.aspx?ref=rss
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