 By Sara Townsley
Published 3/27/2004
After a thorough investigation, that is still ongoing, The Review has unearthed answers to some of the questions raised in my last column. We thought our readers would appreciate an update.
Among many others, we interviewed the Tompkins County District Attorney, George Dentes, who is prosecuting three black female adults in connection with the beating of a white female Cornell student after a Ludacris concert last November. They have all been charged with harassment in the second degree, a “non-criminal offense.” One pled guilty and received a conditional discharge and a $150 fine. One has pled guilty and remains to be sentenced. The third pled not guilty and a trial is pending. The two juveniles involved were handled by a different court.
Charging the adult assailants with “non-criminal offenses” seems astonishingly generous in view of the victim’s substantial injuries, and the strong inference that the attack was at least partially motivated by race. Dentes, however, made three points. One, only the two juveniles involved caused the victim’s injuries, and thus the adults could not be charged with crimes in which physical injury is an element. Two, even if he could have charged “specified offenses” that permit prosecutors to invoke the hate crime law, there was insufficient corroboration of the racial slurs to make it worth pursuing. And three, the Cornell police made the determination of which charges should be brought.
But there are serious problems with all of these points. One, the police point out that Dentes is the lawyer, having unlimited discretion to review charging determinations made by the police. So when confronted with questions about the light charges, the police point to the DA, and the DA points to the police, in a classic circular game of pass the buck.
Two, there was insufficient corroboration of racial motivation only because the sole witness favorable to the victim was scrupulously honest; while the five attackers, in all likelihood, lied to the police. There were two “phases” to the attack, one inside, during the concert, and one outside, afterwards. The victim’s friend was present inside when the women hurled racial epithets at the victim, but the music was so loud, she could not honestly say that she heard them. The attackers, meanwhile, obviously motivated by self-interest, and perhaps emboldened by the lack of witnesses to contradict them, denied ever using racial epithets. We are unable to discern a motivation for the victim to lie, and anyone who watches Chappelle’s Show can surely find it plausible that she was called “whitey” a time or two. Or twenty.
Lesson to violent criminals: always attack in groups with the cover of loud music, so there are more people to deny the story than to corroborate it. It normally infuriates police and prosecutors when suspects play them this way, but apparently, Ithaca’s politically correct magnetic field has scrambled their moral compass.
Third, and worst of all, Dentes' knowledge about who caused the victim’s injuries is incomplete. When the adult women first harassed the victim during the concert -- while using racial epithets -- one shoved her, and two punched her in the head, causing lumps and bruises. Under New York law, this is assault in the third degree, a class A misdemeanor. This is also a specified offense to which the hate crime statute applies, which would increase it to a class E felony.
Furthermore, while the two 14-year-olds caused the most severe of the victim’s injuries in the later incident outside, Dentes has overlooked an important detail. Bleeding and attempting to defend herself against the two juveniles as the three adults looked on, the victim took a swing at one of the juveniles. The instant it hit home, one of the adults announced: "you've hit a minor, now you're in trouble." In other words, just as drug dealers use 12-year-old lookouts because minors face only minimal penalties and expunged records when they turn 18, there is a strong inference that the adults employed the juveniles to carry out the beating. This is solicitation in the third degree, also a class E felony, specifically applicable to adults enlisting minors to commit their crimes by proxy. Even if it would be a challenge to prove this in court beyond a reasonable doubt, a responsible prosecutor would have charged it anyway, to pressure the defendants into pleading guilty to a lesser charge.
Finally, the most shocking discovery: Dentes has never talked to his star witness, the victim. This means she did not testify at the sentencing of the first attacker, likely resulting in the grossly indulgent sentence. It also suggests, so late in the game, that he has no intention of having her testify in the trial or sentencing phases of the other two attackers, coming up very soon. His failure to interview the victim suggests that he hasn't interviewed anyone else either, and his flimsy knowledge of the facts suggests he hasn’t even read the police report very carefully.
Dentes holds his office at the pleasure of the voters. Incredible as it is that a Republican can get elected in the People’s Republic of Ithaca, it’s obvious how he keeps the masses happy: by pandering to the town’s base of leftover 1960s radicals and ivory-tower multiculturalists. Dentes has been criticized in the past for aggressively pursuing minority suspects, so going after violent criminals his constituency prefers to treat gently might create a stir and endanger his office. But we don’t care what party you are: covering your ass, passing the buck, failing to do your homework, and allowing violent crime to go unpunished is an outrage.
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