Game On!
Failed Messiah
The head of the Brooklyn D.A.’s Rackets Bureau wants to prosecute rabbis and community activists who tamper with, threaten, harass, or intimidate victims or their families, or who otherwise obstruct justice. The head of the Brooklyn D.A.’s Rackets Bureau wants to prosecute rabbis and community activists who tamper with, threaten, harass, or intimidate victims or their families, or who otherwise obstruct justice, the Jewish Week has just reported. Michael Vecchione told the Jewish Week’s Hella Winston that his office was willing to do everything to prevent witness tampering, intimidation and obstruction of justice in haredi child sex abuse cases including “[picking] up the phone and [calling] the U.S. attorney” to encourage federal prosecutions. “We should not be limited by what [people in the community] believe intimidation is,” Vecchione said. “[Ostracism] could be [intimidation]. The statute is specific yet broad enough, and there is a catch-all phrase that would get us into that. We should be limited by nothing. [Community members] should just bring to us what they have and then we will go from there,” Vecchione said in a lengthly interview with Winston. Vecchione went on to say that rabbis who contend that reporting child sexual abuse to police with a rabbi’s permission is mesirah, a violation of the Jewish law against informing that is punishable by death according to Jewish law, could be charged with obstruction – depending on when the statement was made, who it was made to and whether or not the statement could be tied to a specific case rather than being a general teaching. This appears to contradict the position of his boss, D.A. Charles Hynes, who told Zev Brenner’s radio audience earlier this week that rabbis labeling something mesirah is a religious matter that his office would not interfere with. “No legal authority ... allows me to object to [such statements] … because they are a religious interpretation,” Hynes said. James A. Cohen, a professor at Fordham Law School and an expert in the area of witness tampering told Winston he disagrees with both Vecchione and Hynes. “A [general], public statement is obstruction,” Cohen told the Jewish Week. “In this country we respect religion … but that doesn’t give [religious leaders] license to stand at the pulpit and say ‘you must consult with a religious figure … before you go to the authorities.’ This is obstruction of justice, plain and simple.” “Where Hynes gets it wrong is that he cannot prosecute someone for the content or viewpoint of their speech, but he can prosecute them for inciting imminent lawless action,” Marci Hamilton, the Paul R. Verkuil chair in public law at Cardozo School of Law, told Winston. “Where the rabbis are inciting their congregations to obstruct justice or endanger children, they are crossing the line from protected speech to illegal conduct.” Vecchione said that the D.A.’s new task force on the harassment and intimidation of haredi victims and their families by rabbis and community figures might consider convening an investigative grand jury. It’s “a very powerful tool in terms of investigating organized crime. The techniques that we use to investigate organized crime can very well be used in this situation as well,” Vecchione said. “Tell people that they have someone they can come to,” Vecchione told Winston. “And that our rackets division is open for business.”
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