Lakewood Rabbi Exaggerated Force Used to Get Divorces from Husbands, Attorney Says
By MaryAnn Spoto
Rabbi Mendel Epstein engaged in puffery and exaggerations when he talked about torturing husbands to extract divorces from them but he was not involved in a federal kidnapping scheme, his attorney told jurors on Tuesday. As the federal kidnapping and conspiracy trial of the Lakewood religious leader winds down, defense attorneys are summing up two months of testimony that federal prosecutors argued on Monday shows Epstein and three others employed criminal practices to get those divorces. "A crime may have been committed here, but it wasn't federal kidnapping," said Epstein's attorney, Robert Stahl. "We all know what the goal of what happened here was." Epstein, 69, is on trial before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson in Trenton along with his son, David "Ari" Epstein, and two other rabbis, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein on charges they were part of a kidnapping conspiracy to force Orthodox Jewish husbands to grant their wives religious divorces. The three defense attorneys who completed their summations on Tuesday said that force and threats may have been used against the victims, but there were no kidnappings. "There is a very, very large difference between threatening someone and kidnapping them," said attorney Aidan O'Connor, who represents Goldstein. Goldstein, of Brooklyn, served as the scribe who wrote the gets but didn't participate in any beatings or tortures and wasn't in the room when they took place, O'Connor said. Similarly, Stimler's attorney said his client was present at get ceremonies as a witness but never participated in any beatings or kidnappings. But Stimler didn't serve as witness to three of the four gets Epstein is accused of orchestrating, which undermines the government's claim that he was part of an organized team, said attorney Nathan Lewin. "How could he be part of Epstein's team and not be involved in these?" Lewin asked. "Because he was not part of any team." Stahl said Epstein was "puffing" to put at ease a woman who told him she was desperate for a divorce in order to start a new life. That woman was actually an undercover FBI agent. "What we're doing is basically going to be kidnapping a guy for a couple hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the get," Epstein is heard saying on the video taken in August 2013. Those secretly recorded conversations led the FBI to arrest eight people, including Stimler and Goldstein, on Oct. 9, 2013, at a warehouse in Edison where the men had planned to force the husband - who actually was non-existent - to issue his wife a religious divorce, known as a get. Stahl and the other defense attorneys tried to paint the case against their clients as one crafted by federal prosecutors looking for witnesses who would support Epstein's statements about kidnapping and torture that undercover agents secretly recorded in 2013. Stahl reminded the jury of eight men and eight women about the testimony of Israel Markowitz, a man who was beaten in Lakewood in 2009 until he agreed to give his wife a divorce. Stahl said Markowitz never told Lakewood detectives that his attackers used a Taser on him, including on his genitals. On the secretly record tapes, Epstein had said his "team" used cattle prods to get reluctant husbands to relent. Yet, when federal agents arrested eight men at an Edison warehouse in October 2013 as part of the federal sting, there were no cattle prods found, Stahl said. There also were no plastic zip ties, handcuffs, baseball bats or other implements mentioned on the tapes, Stahl noted. "He means well but he's living in part of his own world," Stahl said, referring to Epstein's claims that the "team" also employed female karate experts, tranquilizer guns or pills and Special Forces of the military dropping out of trees. While most of the trial had been relatively light-hearted, closing arguments cast a somber pall over those packed into the courtroom on Monday and Tuesday. Stahl and Lewin grew emotional when discussing their respective clients and Stimler's wife read from a prayer book and occasionally cried when Lewin delivered his summations. David Epstein's attorney, Henry Mazurek, is set to give the last of the closing arguments on Wednesday before federal prosecutors deliver their rebuttal arguments. The case then will go to the jury after it is reduced from 16 to 12 members. MaryAnn Spoto may be reached at mspoto@njadvancemedia.com
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.