Last week, you wrote an editorial criticizing the team supporting Jesse Friedman, for pointing out that Nassau DA Kathleen Rice has hired one of the most expensive law firms in the country to defend her against charges that she defamed Jesse Friedman in her “conviction review” of Friedman’s 1988 conviction.
While Rice’s office describes Friedman’s suit against her as “meritless,” her own assistant DA admitted in Nassau County Supreme Court that statements Rice made about Friedman turned out to be false.
In fact, Nassau County Supreme Court Justice F. Dana Winslow stated in the same hearing that the sole purpose of Rice distributing the false statements about Friedman was to make Friedman appear to be “a bad guy.”
You are correct that we were surprised to learn that Debevoise & Plimpton had agreed to represent the DA free of charge, because as far as we know neither Debevoise nor DA Rice had publicly revealed this unusual arrangement.
The pro-bono services of costly lawyers are traditionally reserved for the poor and needy, and Kathleen Rice is neither. Why does DA Rice need a fancy New York law firm to defend her against charges her own office admits are valid, and why does a firm like Debevoise want to work for her for free?
No doubt DA Rice will need a clever lawyer to explain how her office spent three years writing a false report about Jesse Friedman, and didn’t leave time to fact check even her most damaging statements.
A simple Google search would have revealed her irresponsible claims about Jesse having written child pornography in prison were patently false.
The pornography she falsely attributed to Friedman is publicly available on the internet, written by and credited to others. A second Google search would make it clear that the “renowned psychiatrist” on whose opinions she relies dozens of times in the Rice Report has never even been a psychiatrist.
The Rice Report on the Friedman case was so riddled with errors, and so devoid of fairness and transparency that even Barry Scheck, the most prominent member of Rice’s own hand-picked Friedman Case Advisory Panel has since called for the release of the case files long withheld by Rice’s office, and a new hearing for Jesse Friedman.
In doing so, Scheck adds his voice to a growing chorus of legal authorities, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Winslow, the original case judge’s law secretary, Scott Banks (and dozens of laypeople including 27 eyewitnesses), who have all called for a proper review of the conviction of Jesse Friedman.
Andrew Jarecki
Director, “Capturing the Friedmans”
