by David Grossack

    ….and something good for society happens. I am thinking of the vindication of the Duke Lacrosse players and the exposure of Prosecutor Nifong as one who betrayed his office and violated the constitutional rights of the accused.

Would we want such a person as President of the United States?

I hope the answer is no, but I fear I may be disappointed, because such a person is running and he is doing quite well in the polls. The candidate I speak of is a former United States Attorney who was entrusted by this nation to prosecute those who were guilty of federal crimes. He in fact abused his office, but has been successful in utilizing public relations and the power of myth making media to pretend that he is a man of decency and integrity.

    Rudy Giuliani has led a life of deception, betrayal, bullying and hypocrisy that is easily documentable and should convince any decent and reasonable person that he is the worst possible candidate seeking the Presidency.

    As a prosecutor, Giuliani engaged in high profile securities fraud prosecutions that were often dropped after the initial press conferences and arrests. It was known that anybody at any time could be pulled off the floor of the stock exchange for no reason and charged with a crime, be publicly and permanently embarrassed, suddenly have the charges dropped, and never receive an explanation  or apology from Mr. Giuliani's office.

    Richard Wigton was an executive at Kidder Peabody who Giuliani claimed was guilty of insider trading in February of 1987. Under instructions from Giuliani, Federal agents handcuffed him and arrested him and marched him through the company trading floor in tears. Giuliani invented the "perp walk" a media event that needlessly embarrasses people who are presumed innocent, but which in any event provided a publicity hungry prosecutor media time.

    Timothy Tabor, a former employee of Wigton’s, was also arrested and accused by Giuliani of insider trading Tabor spent some time in jail when initially arrested.

    But there was no evidence to substantiate Giuliani's accusations and the charges were dropped, after the public humiliation caused to these two innocent citizens. Their families suffered terrible embarrassment while Giuliani rode to the mayor's office over the reputations of innocent people like Wigton and Tabor.

    Sadly, federal law often makes prosecutors immune from damages for the harm they cause to innocent defendants. Unfortunately, Wigton and Tabor were not alone among the victims of Giuliani's march to political power. 

   Daniel Fischel is a highly reputed law professor and former dean of the prestigious University of Chicago Law School. He is the author of a book entitled Payback: The Conspiracy to Destroy Michael Milken and his Financial Revolution. Fischel, along with the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal, undertook a close scrutiny of the prosecution of Michael Milken by Giuliani's office and found that it was completely unjustified.

    Nevertheless, Giuliani was often able to coerce guilty please from people who were most likely innocent by charging them with a plethora of crimes, putting them at risk for decades of jail.

    In such circumstances, most people would plead to something they did not do, agreeing to serve a year of two in jail rather than 20 or 30 years.

    Thus it also was with Richard  Freeman, a Goldman Sachs executive who pled guilty to mail fraud before the witness against him was learned to be unreliable.

    More fortunate was Bess Myerson, the former Miss America indicted by Giuliani for obstruction of justice because she simply agreed to give a job to the daughter of a judge who was presiding over a friend of hers. Myerson was acquitted, and Giuliani faced ample criticism for overkill. He prosecuted the judge and the friend as well, and they were both acquitted.

    There were more prosecutions that terminated prematurely or wound up in pleas where the danger of long sentences coerced admission to offenses  the accused probably never committed. The Giuliani legacy was to deprive people of due process of law, ruin peoples' lives and gain a whole lot of publicity on his way to the Mayor's Mansion.

     As Mayor, Giuliani's callous disregard for the Constitution was exemplified by his police department.

      Artist Robert Lederman drew caricatures of the Mayor and displayed them at rallies and protest marches. Under orders from the Mayor, Lederman was arrested 4o times but never convicted. First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and others were highly critical of this blatant abuse of power, as was former mayor Ed Koch.

      When his police force drilled a hapless African immigrant forty times with bullets while he was reaching for his wallet, New York's population was furious. But Giuliani shrugged off the protests by saying that those who complained were doing so "out of their own personal inadequacies."

      Giuliani's record on other instances of police misconduct in his administration was abysmal. Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was sodomized with a toilet plunger while in police custody. The cop who did it, according to witnesses, yelled “This is Giuliani time!"

       While this writer is loathe to condemn a fellow Republican, there are times when it is necessary. As with Klansman David Duke, the party need not accommodate those who would deny others their constitutional rights.

The author is Chairman of the Hull Mass. Republican Town Committee.

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