March 24, 2007
MOST FORGIVING D.A. EVER
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes's job description is essentially to lay blame. As a D.A., he's the agent of the state responsible for making the case for guilt of people charged with crimes. When it comes to, not criminal actions, but a colossal blunder made by someone in his own office that may have cost a young rape victim her life, however, he is more forgiving than Jesus, at peace than Buddha, and understanding than Oprah.
In 2005, Natasha Ramen was allegedly raped by a man named Hemant Megnath, who had lured her to his home under the pretense of showing her an available apartment for rent. Months later, she went to the police and reported the rape. Megnath was charged and released on $5,000 bail with an accompanying order of protection prohibiting him from contacting Ramen, who was scheduled to testify against him.
In October, relatives of Ms. Ramen told the police that Mr. Megnath had threatened to kill her and her husband. He was arrested on charges of aggravated harassment, under the jurisdiction of Queens prosecutors, but the Ramen family did not press charges.
Ms. Teitelman, who was standing in for another assistant district attorney on the rape case in Brooklyn, was told of the harassment arrest in Queens, Mr. Hynes said in his statement. Prosecutors routinely use such information to argue for an increase in bail or other conditions to restrain the defendant. For reasons Mr. Hynes did not explain, Ms. Teitelman did not tell Judge Walsh about the harassment arrest.
Last Thursday evening, Natasha Ramen left her job in Queens and a man cut her throat twice and deeply, nearly decapitating her (I guess we could call if 'OJ-Style'). Mr Megnath was arrested almost immediately and has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bail. So is it normal for a person charged with rape and an order of protection against his witness, who has threatened to kill that witness and her family, to be out on the street on just $5,000 bail? No, it's not. But D.A. Hynes lets us know that everything's cool, because it was an "honest mistake."
The Brooklyn district attorney reportedly says his office should have warned a judge that threats had been made against the family of a rape victim who was later killed.
But according to reports, District Attorney Charles Hynes says it was an honest mistake that his office didn't warn the judge ahead of time and so it shouldn't be blamed for the death of Natasha Ramen.
The Times provides some more detail:
“It was an honest mistake,” he said. “To attempt to blame her is almost as ludicrous as trying to lay the blame on Ms. Ramen’s family, who refused to cooperate in the Queens prosecution. My heart goes out to the family for the terrible tragedy that the defendant brought upon them.”
Perhaps the reason the family wouldn't cooperate was because they were terrified of Mr. Megnath, and rightly so. Note that it was relatives who had to contact the police about the death threats Megnath made to Ramen. Is ludicrous the word that is appropriate here? Is it ludicrous to think that an A.D.A might want to inform a judge that a defendant has threatened to murder the victim of his crime who is the state's primary witness in its case? Perhaps too many years of watching "Law & Order" have left me with a wildly inflated impression of professional standards of competence maintained by the D.A.'s office.
I commend Charles Hynes for being the type of boss that reflexively moves to defend his underlings when they are being attacked in the press. I'm sure that Ms. Teitelman is a good lawyer and probably well liked by her co-workers, who are rushing to defend her (in part by blaming the victim and her family.) She made an "honest mistake" however, in that it was definitely a mistake, and one that she did not make with any malice towards the victim. It's more akin to a surgeon who removes a patient's healthy kidney and leaves a diseased one in, thereby killing him; or an airline pilot who mistakenly doesn't follow the control tower's directions and lands his plane on the wrong runway, which results in a fatal crash. These are serious mistakes and ones that can't be brushed away with non-mea culpas like "Whoa, our bad. Sorry 'bout that. What's for lunch?"
Tagged: d.a., hynes, murder, rape, witnessPosted by Lexiphane at March 24, 2007 8:16 AM
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