FEAR OF A BLACK PROSECUTOR
“Progressive” Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes Prosecuted His Political Rivals, Most of Whom Were Black.
A New Look the Brooklyn DA, on the One Year Anniversary of his Death
A New York Megaphone Exclusive
by Sander Hicks.
Sept. 7, 2020. Brooklyn, NY.
I remember the night I met Charles “Joe” Hynes, the old Brooklyn DA. I went down to Bay Ridge, a neighborhood he had lived in for decades. He was doing a public event around civil rights. The time was around 2007, the climactic years of the War on Terror, just before the Great Recession.
Before the event started, Hynes asked us all to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. We all said the words, up to the end, “with liberty, and justice for all.”
And then in the conclusive, reverent silence, someone added, “...and no torture.” Hynes looked up, over tired eyelids, not smiling, but also somehow, not surprised.
I used to think Charles “Joe” Hynes was a hero. He had progressive social justice policies, and he took on FBI corruption. But after looking deeper into his life, now I am not so sure. The question remains - how did a popular progressive DA with 23 years in office suddenly get beaten by a challenger, in 2013?
Hynes’ decline and fall shows something rotten in the system that he presided over and exploited. There was a pattern of crooked prosecutions in his final years, despite his claims to the contrary. He used the DA’s office to preserve his own job, not once, but three times prosecuting political rivals.
Eventually, the voters caught on.
There’s a huge structural problem in NY State law. 50% of all the USA's election based litigation happens in New York State. The rest of the country has figured out how to give candidates access to the ballot, fairly. Something is rotten here in the apple.
The Board of Elections in New York City is not a public agency dedicated to fair and objective elections. It is run in New York City by “clerks” or political appointees from the two major parties. The jobs are easy, well-paid, plush patronage positions. In 2013, the NYC Department of Investigation urged the BOE to be reformed, in a special report. And then, nothing happened. No politician wants to bite the hand that feeds.
On January 29, 2019, the former Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes died while vacationing in Florida. Hynes was known for a 23 year legacy that oversaw a sharp drop in crime and murder in Kings County. Hynes was well-known for progressive alternative sentencing programs, and set up an innovative anti-domestic violence bureau. But Hynes exploited the vulnerabilities of the NY State Board of Elections process. He levied charges on, arrested, disbarred, intimidated, and sued his political rivals, sometimes even to death. At the one year anniversary of his own death, it’s a good time to take a long hard look at the life and legacy of Charles Hynes.
Hynes was born in 1935, into a violent Flatbush household that was wrecked with domestic violence. He was educated in Catholic schools, including college. Hynes first became well-known as the Special Prosecutor in the high-profile, racially-charged Howard Beach murder trial. The crime involved a gang of young whites who chased their black victim, Michael Griffith, onto the Belt Parkway, where he was struck and killed. Three were found guilty of manslaughter, because Hynes convinced one of them to turn on the others as a witness.
Hynes later admitted, in a TV interview shortly before the end of his life, that Governor Mario Cuomo had been so impressed with Hynes’ work on Howard Beach, that he had someone pull some strings, behind the scenes, to win Hynes a well-paid law firm job, so that Hynes would have the money to win the race for Brooklyn DA.
Hynes came out of Howard Beach a hero, but there is one nagging question that has never been answered. When Michael Griffith was killed, it was by a driver named Dominick Blum, a 25-year old court officer and member of the NY State Court Officers Union. Blum left the scene of the accident, and claimed he didn’t know he struck a person. Eventually he returned his blood-stained car to the scene, but only after contacting his Court Officer union president Dennis Quirk. Quirk elected to house the vehicle as evidence in his Staten Island garage.
(Quirk today was happy to answer questions from this reporter. But post-interview, one question is still nagging. If the driver, Dominick Blum didn’t know that he had struck Michael Griffith, why did he contact his union president at all? Why jettison his car in Quirk’s garage?)
Union president Quirk is quite the political power broker; and went on to become Charles Hynes’ campaign supervisor and strategic manager for all of his political campaigns: including 23 years as DA, as well as Hynes’ fizzled attempts to run for Governor, or State Attorney General.
On the other hand, 29 new innovative justice programs were started by DA Hynes, including the Red Hook Community Court, which uses conflict resolution techniques modeled in part on Native American traditions. Hynes rolled out “DTAP” an alternative to prison program. It gave non-violent drug offenders a chance to do treatment, instead of prison.
Hynes woke up every day at 5 AM, and pushed this staff to work hard. His team focused on reducing recidivism rates (when a criminal repeats a past crime).
After the Crown Heights riots, Hynes came under sharp criticism as DA, for not being able to convict Lemrick Nelson, who had been arrested with a bloody knife in his pocket, following the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum.
Another Side of Hynes: Political Prosecutions
Hynes certainly had a sense of mission. And that may explain his tragic flaws, which resulted in his final defeat at the polls. Three times, various challengers stood up to Hynes. He repeatedly used his prosecutorial power to investigate and indict political rivals. Maybe he was convinced no one could do his job better. But this part of the story seems to show a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct, especially in the period from 1997 to 2003, especially with African-American challengers.
In 1997, Charles Hynes prosecuted lawyer John O'Hara for voting in the “wrong” election district. O’Hara had been an insurgent candidate running up against the established Assemblyman Jim Brennan, whom Hynes favored. O’Hara actually lived in two apartments, and lived mostly in the one where he was registered to vote. But he was convicted on multiple counts of voter fraud, fined $20,000, and was disbarred. He had to serve 1,500 hours of community service scrubbing toilets in public parks.
In 2009, twelve years later, the NY State Supreme Court Appellate Division reinstated O’Hara as a lawyer, claiming that the “machine was gunning for him and pounced on his change of residency, calling it election fraud.”
John O’Hara was also involved, in 2001, when Civil Court Judge John Phillips announced a challenge to Charles Hynes. DA Hynes claimed that the 77-year-old Phillips was too old and incompetent to run for DA. So Hynes appointed a “guardian” to seize Phillips’ $10 million portfolio of Brooklyn real estate. The colorful Phillips had been known as the “Kung Fu Judge” since he was a blackbelt, and owned two movie theatres in Brooklyn, used for political rallies. He even wrote and produced his own film, “Hands Across Two Continents,” about interracial love. But when Hynes’ office came after Judge Phillips, they came hard, and they took his $10 million dollars worth of real estate away. Judge Phillips was practically incarcerated at the Prospect Park Residence senior citizens’ home, where he died, penniless and freezing cold, in 2008. John O’Hara sued the Prospect Park Residence for negligence and a lack of heat in Judge Phillips’ room. O’Hara won $750,000 and then kept suing the place until it was shuttered and out of business.
John O’Hara went on to support the campaign of the next Hynes challenger, Sandra Roper. Roper was a civil rights lawyer, and community advocate when she challenged Charles Hynes in the Democratic Primary in 2001. She became the first African American Latina to run for Brooklyn District Attorney, and became known, by her own admission, as the woman with “Steel Balls.”
You can begin to feel the grumblings of voter dissatisfaction about Hynes, when “Steel Balls” Roper took down an impressive 36% of the vote in 2001, a sizable chunk of support for a political unknown.
After running against Hynes, the Brooklyn DA’s office charged Roper with felony theft of a client. (She later repaid a former client $9,000, and the case against her was dropped.) When Roper was indicted, she was fired from her job working as a court attorney for Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Joan Carey. Hynes allegedly had a conversation with Judge Carey, behind the scenes, to urge Roper to be terminated, according to claims in Roper’s lawsuit.
One time inside the women’s room at Brooklyn Supreme Court, Roper relates that a Hynes messenger told her she should drop out of the race, or she would be disbarred. She responded, “I will take off this nice suit. I will put on proper wear. I will scrub every toilet in here in order to support my family if you disbar me. But I am not backing down.”
Today, Sandra Roper is a Civil Court Judge in Brooklyn, elected to a ten year term in 2017.
Hynes Vs. Democratic Party Boss Norman
Two of DA Charles Hynes’ most interesting cases both happened in the mid 2000’s. First, in 2003, Hynes indicted the Kings County Democrat party boss Clarence Norman Jr., on extortion and corruption charges. Norman was caught on tape, asking for $100,000 donations to get his support for judge candidates. He also allegedly coerced judicial candidates to hire Party insider campaign consultants. He was convicted by a jury of grand larceny.
But, there could be more to this story.
Brooklyn attorney John O’Hara tells this reporter, “Every newspaper article says Clarence got convicted for selling judgeships––not true. He got convicted for being a black man who wore fancy clothes and drove nice cars. The charges were such small time nickel and dime stuff, but that became Hynes’ ‘reason’ to get elected in 2005 - Hynes even fooled the New York Times editorial board. When the Times re-endorsed him for re-election, they said it was to complete the trial against Norman.”
Attorney Abe George has been there––he too was a former candidate who dared to run against incumbent Charles Hynes. He did it in 2013, during Hynes’ last stand, and bowed out of the race so that he wouldn’t split the vote. His decision to stand aside allowed rising star attorney Ken Thompson to eventually beat Charles Hynes.
According to Abe George, Party Boss Clarence Norman’s only crime was allowing challengers to run against the incumbent, Charles Hynes. “The Democratic Party boss’s job is to control the party line, he was supposed to control who was running, and block all opposition.”
(This seems consistent with a related story. This thuggish role of the “Party Boss” reminds one of the behavior of recently resigned Brooklyn Dem. Party Boss Frank Seddio, in 2016. Under Seddio and his lackey Betty Ann Cannizio, 200,000 voters were purged from the rolls, especially LatinX names, minority voters who might be interested in Presidential Primary alternatives to Hillary Clinton. Cannizio was fired from her patronage position at BOE for this. She told the New York Times, “I didn’t sign off on anything.”)
Hynes Vs. The Mafia and FBI
Hynes, late in his career, showed his heroic side, when he shattered a big “blue wall of silence.” He waded out deep, maybe over his head, into a major case of Federal corruption, by taking on the New York FBI. He levied four counts of murder against FBI Special Agent Lindley DeVecchio, who had grown very close to mafia don Greg Scarpa Sr. Scarpa was an FBI informant, but continued to blatantly murder people, even while informing and working with FBI. Soon it became unclear who was working for who. Voices inside the FBI suspected DeVecchio was actually helping Scarpa murder his opponents, so investigator Angela Clemente and Representative Delahunt (D-MA) went looking for a local prosecutor to look at the evidence. Charles Hynes took up their case.
Charles Hynes called his indictment of DeVecchio, "The most stunning example of official corruption I have ever seen." The details are grisly. Lin DeVecchio used his FBI intelligence on Scarpa’s behalf, to eliminate mob girlfriends and the young male witnesses, who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Guys were iced, just out of high school, who were suspected of telling the truth about Mafia Don Greg Scarpa. Hynes charged that DeVecchio took $66,000 in payments from Scarpa.
The Devecchio case went deep into the secret history of American politics. DeVecchio had ties not only to Greg Scarpa, but also CIA and the Iran/Contra underworld. When his subordinate FBI agent Richard Taus wanted to blow the whistle on an operation involving Oliver North and narcotics, Taus was railroaded into a long prison sentence upstate. (He’s still there.) When the CIA wanted to set up and wiretap one of their own, the jailed ex CIA whistleblower Edwin Wilson, they sent in Lin DeVecchio, undercover and wearing a wire, to be Wilson’s cellmate.
This reporter personally attended the “perp walk” and the indictment of Lin DeVecchio at Brooklyn Criminal Court in 2007. It was a violent scene in which plainclothes FBI agents shoved reporters and authors, and punched a photographer from the Times. The FBI was angry, blind with rage. They themselves had forgotten what they stood for, as their mafia expert Lin DeVecchio was publicly indicted for killing four people for the mob.
Tragically, this “biggest case of government corruption” fell apart. Maybe someone said something to someone and Hynes’ boxers were told to take a dive, but the fight was over in the second round. A Village Voice reporter named Tom Robbins found some old tapes that allegedly scotched the testimony of star witness Linda Schiro. But that didn’t quite add up, and when I interviewed Robbins, he seemed oddly combative. Robbins seemed more sympathetic to DeVecchio, than to his victims.
DeVecchio was just too well connected. Hynes was top cop in Brooklyn. But DeVecchio was a top cop tied to Langley, Washington, and mercenary intelligence circles. It was like David versus Goliath, but this time the shepherd boy lost. Hynes’ senior prosecutor Michael Vecchione folded his hand.
Michael Vecchione later had 30 of his other convictions at this time put under judicial review. He withheld evidence, and coerced witnesses, in less high profile cases. Those cases unfairly prosecuted innocent black and poor people, to get a conviction no matter what. But when Hynes and Vecchione went after Federal corruption, in a case that went to the secret core of some deep corners of the intelligence world, they could not, or would not make the case. The prestige of a major law enforcement agency was at stake, and someone said to Hynes, make this go away.
And so he did.
Scenes from a Grand Defeat: 2013
“What I really focussed on was running someone against Hynes every four years until I got him out of office, and I did.” says attorney John O’Hara today. Today, even former friends of Charles Hynes admit that O’Hara was “selectively prosecuted.”
“The Prosecutors control the courtroom. The judges just coordinate the traffic. I wasn’t getting my conviction overturned until I got Hynes out of office.”
I ask John O’Hara what is a secret about Hynes that most people do not know. O’Hara argues that Hynes often said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and was the opposite of a natural politician.
“In 1998 when he ran for Governor, he was asked why he was running, he said, ‘Can you imagine being Brooklyn DA for the rest of your life?’”
In 2013, the time was right for Hynes’ life as a DA to come to an end. A NYC Department of Investigation report later showed that Hynes used $1 million in forfeiture funds seized from crooks to pay his publicist, Morty Matz, in his losing 2013 campaign against Ken Thompson. Also that year, there was the Jewish pedophiles scandal, where Hynes was accused of coddling Orthodox pedophiles, in order to keep up strong support from the Jewish vote. The video of the Hynes/Thompson debate shows a gruff, stooped, bitter Hynes antagonizing the audience. When they boo something he says, he asks Thompson, “Did you train them to behave this way?” Thompson simply shrugs to the audience, as if to say, “I rest my case.”
In September, 2013, Hynes lost the Primary to Ken Thompson, who took 55% of the vote. It was a stunning upset, as Thompson was the first challenger to defeat a sitting District Attorney in Brooklyn since 1911.
At the time of his Democratic Primary defeat, Hynes accepted the loss and promised to stop campaigning. However, he then did an about-face. Since he was already on the ballot under the GOP nomination, he ran as a Republican in the general election. He thought he could count on his name recognition, but that name was tarnished. He was defeated in an even worse landslide.
Thompson was the first African-American district attorney of Kings County. He took office on January 1, 2014, but his tenure was tragically cut short by cancer. He is remembered for his advocacy of minority communities, the decision to drop charges in low level marijuana cases, and a crackdown on gun violence. Although he only served two years, the thing Ken Thompson is best known for is a reversal of many of Charles Hynes’ wrongfully convicted defendants.
13 years ago, when I first met Charles Hynes in person, I was impressed that he started that event in Bay Ridge with the Pledge of Allegiance. And I have to admit it was me who piped up from the audience, and added the new line to the end of the Pledge. “And no torture.”
He looked up at me. I’m sure there was a time in his life when he would’ve been a vocal supporter of standing up to the federal government that waterboarded in the name of freedom and liberty. But something happened to this man. It snuffed the fire out of his heart.