Judge grants hearing in Friedman case

Adam Lidgett

Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Teresa Corrigan on Dec. 23 approved an evidentiary hearing on claims made by Great Neck native Jesse Friedman that he is innocent of a 25-year-old sex abuse conviction.

But Corrigan denied Friedman’s motions to overturn his convictions based on the prosecution knowingly using false testimony and a coerced guilty plea to gain the conviction, according to court documents.

“We’re pleased the court denied out of hand the defendant’s claims that we and the court engaged in misconduct and that the guilty plea was coerced,” said Paul Leonard, deputy communications coordinator for the district attorney’s office.

“We’re confident that after this hearing, the defendant’s claim of actual innocence will be denied as well,” he added.

The hearing date on court documents is listed as Jan. 5.

But Shams Tarek, director of communications for the Nassau County District Attorney’s office, said the hearing could be postponed for a number of reasons.

Lonnie Soury, a spokesman for Friedman, said Friedman’s legal team will be applying for discovery in the coming weeks, which would most likely take place before the actual hearing. Soury said they are seeking information the district attorney has that would be favorable to the defense.

The defense team, he said, will seek what could be thousands of pages of documents in discovery, including interviews done by police.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice had agreed to a court hearing on claims made by Friedman that he is innocent of a 25-year sex abuse conviction in Nassau County Supreme Court on Sept. 8.

A spokesman for Rice said in September that Rice, who has since been elected to 4th congressional district, believes Friedman’s original 1989 guilty conviction of sexually abusing young boys enrolled in a computer class in his Great Neck home should still be upheld.

“Following an exhaustive re-examination of Jesse Friedman’s case, in collaboration with a distinguished and independent panel of experts, we have confidence that Friedman’s conviction of the crimes to which he pled guilty will continue to be rightly upheld,” Leonard said in an e-mail in September.

Rice’s office released a report last year after a three-year review of the case, reaffirming Friedman’s conviction. The review was conducted after a Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2010 indicated that some evidence suggested Friedman might have been wrongfully convicted.

In the district attorneys office filing consenting to a hearing on Friedman’s innocence claim in September, Rice objected to two motions made by Friedman to vacate his 1989 conviction and for Corrigan to recuse herself from the case, claiming that Corrigan is a close friend of Rice and cannot be unbiased in hearing the case.

Ron Kuby, attorney for Friedman, continued to argue in a release following Corrigan’s decision to hold an evidentiary hearing that Corrigan cannot fairly judge the case because of what he claimed was a close friendship between Corrigan and with Rice, who Kuby said is Friedman’s biggest detractor, according to the release.

“Corrigan’s obvious bias will only undermine public confidence in a process that has already dragged on for 27 years,” Kuby said. “We have asked Judge Corrigan to recuse herself, and we are hopeful she will do so.”

“Judge Teresa Corrigan has been a protégé of DA Rice – Jesse Friedman’s principal opponent – since the two practiced law together in the Brooklyn DA’s office over two decades ago,” Kuby said in late August.

And Corrigan has been an ‘insider’ in DA Kathleen Rice’s office from when she was handpicked by Rice in 2006 as an Assistant DA, until Corrigan became a judge, with DA Rice’s support, in 2012,” Kuby added.

Friedman and his father Arnold were convicted in 1989 of abusing young boys while they attending a computer class at the Friedmans’ home.

Friedman, who was 18 years old at the time, was charged with 243 counts of child sexual abuse.  

Jesse Friedman served a 13 year prison sentence and was branded a Level III “violent sexual predator.” He was released in 2001, and has said that his confession was coerced from law enforcement officials.

Rice agreed in September to a hearing on claims made by Friedman that he is innocent.

Justice Dana Winslow, a state Supreme Court Judge in Mineola, ruled in August 2013 hat Rice had to hand over “every piece of paper” of Friedman’s case file, exempting only victim names.

Rice then appealed Winslow’s ruling.

Friedman’s claims of innocence were chronicled in the documentary “Capturing the Friedmans,” which was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2003.

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