Posted on 05/17/2002 11:38:38 PM PDT by sarcasm
ust before the pornographer Al Goldstein was sentenced to 60 days in jail this month for harassing his former secretary, he delivered a stirring speech in which he claimed the mantle of First Amendment martyr. "Jail means nothing to me," Mr. Goldstein thundered, "because freedom means so much to me."
Six days at Rikers Island have changed his views.
Mr. Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, was released from Rikers on $25,000 bail yesterday, pending an appeal of his conviction on five misdemeanor harassment charges.
His lawyers said that he should have been released on Monday, after he posted bail, but that for four days, the Department of Correction kept finding reasons to hold him. "This is unheard of, that you post bond on a guy on Monday and it takes them until Friday to release him," said Herald Price Fahringer, one of Mr. Goldstein's many lawyers.
Mr. Goldstein — 66, overweight, diabetic, weak of heart and by his own admission almost pathologically neurotic — said that the six days had left him a broken man.
"They had me on 14 medications," he said on the phone yesterday, crying. "All I did was hallucinate. I wanted to grab a correction officer's gun — not to break out, but to shoot myself.
"I couldn't even eat," he said. "Imagine me not eating. I lost 11 pounds. And I was afraid to take a shower, so I didn't shower the whole time I was there."
The spokesman for the Correction Department, Thomas Antenen, said that Mr. Goldstein's release had been delayed by paperwork anomalies. His sentencing papers listed five docket numbers, for the five charges, but the bail order from Judge Deborah A. Dowling of Brooklyn Supreme Court listed only one number.
Mr. Fahringer said it should have been obvious that the bail order applied to all the charges — what would be the point, he asked, of setting bail for one charge and denying it for the others?
Mr. Antenen said that that was not how it worked. "You might say 'You should assume,' but we can't make assumptions when we're discharging people from custody," he said. "The paperwork has to match up."
Mr. Goldstein said he planned to sue the city over his ordeal.
Vantage point from soap on a rope?
Notice how he doesn't say he has changed his illegal ways so he won't be sent for a repeat visit?
Don't flatter yourself, Al.
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