"[A]n image that remains from Friday was that of a Hasidic father standing in court, rocking slightly, as an assistant district attorney described wildly inconsistent statements and witnesses who lacked any shred of credibility. The people, the prosecutor said at last, do not have a credible case [against Samuel Kellner].'” All of those witnesses who "lacked any shred of credibility" came to the DA directly from Rabbi Baruch Lebovits' family, his close supporters and his attorneys – primarily Arthur Aidala and Alan Dershowitz. The question now is, will what in some of these cases has the look of witness tampering and suborning perjury be investigated and prosecuted?
Michael Powell writes in the New York Times:
… Mr. Lebovits’s supporters spared few riches in his defense, and hired Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard professor. Over the years, Mr. Dershowitz and his partners piled up their accusations like so much cordwood. They claimed to discover witnesses against Mr. Kellner, and prevailed upon Mr. Hynes’s longtime favorite, the ex-rackets chief Michael F. Vecchione, to overrule his own prosecutors and try Mr. Kellner.
“We see Kellner as a leader of a major extortion ring,” Mr. Dershowitz told me last year.
In a baroque touch, Mr. Dershowitz appeared in State Supreme Court on Friday and somehow gained admittance to a pretrial conference with the judge, arguing against the dismissal of the Kellner case. This was marvelous theater.
It was also absurd.
“The idea that a third party — especially on behalf of a criminal defendant accused of crimes by Kellner — could immerse themselves in this case is almost unheard-of, if not comical,” noted Mark A. Bederow, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney.
Mr. Dershowitz roamed the hallway afterward, playing with a grin the more disquieting for the fact that his eyes ran cobalt. He spoke ominously, as he has for years, of new evidence. “This case is not over,” he said. Mr. Kellner “may very well still be going to jail because this tape is the smoking gun.”
Then he suggested that Mr. Kellner’s defense lawyer might appear on an incriminating tape. “A word to the wise,” he said. “Be careful.”
Still, an image that remains from Friday was that of a Hasidic father standing in court, rocking slightly, as an assistant district attorney described wildly inconsistent statements and witnesses who lacked any shred of credibility.
The people, the prosecutor said at last, “do not have a credible case [against Samuel Kellner].”…