WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN: Pirro’s Internet Sex “Stink”

Two weeks ago the Appellate Division, Second Department, of State Supreme Court, effectively pulled the rug from beneath Jeanine Pirro, literally tossing her self-promotional career, together with her quest for the State Attorney General’s Office, into the waste basket. In throwing out the indictment and conviction of Jeffrey Kozlow, Indictment # 01042 of 2004, Justices Crane, Krausman, Rivera, and Dillon were not merely reversing the conviction of one out of more than one hundred men prosecuted through Pirro’s, highly publicized, Internet sting operation, between July of 1999 and December of 2005.

Rather, they were declaring the core theory under which theWestchester District Attorney’s Office had prosecuted the majority of those ensnared in its sting to have been fatally flawed, and Constitutionally deficient.

In stating, “Ordered that the judgment is reversed, on the law, the indictment is dismissed,” and remitting the matter back to the Westchester County Court, the Appellate Division, Second Department, which had been historically very easy on Mrs. Pirro, as well as her convicted felon spouse, were now, finally drawing a line in the sand. And, while it might appear at first blush that the overwhelming majority of the cases that were brought to indictment through the sting could be favorably impacted, only a very few actually will be.

In making it’s decision the Court’s finding was that the evidence, upon which County Court Judge Joseph Alessandro, sitting as the trier of fact, had found Mr. Kozlowguilty of five counts of Attempted Disseminating of Indecent Material To Minors in the First Degree, was “legally insufficient.” The Court found that the DA “failed to establish that the Defendant’s Internet communications with an undercover police officer, whom he believed to be a minor, depicted sexual conduct within the meaning of Penal Law Section 235.22(1) since they contained no visual sexual images.”

In truth, very few of the more than one hundred prosecutions generated over 53 months by Pirro’s high-profile sting operation involved the transmission of visual images. However, of those that did not, only a mere handful, were not disposed of by plea bargains. Two such cases that went to trial were Kozlow, case number 100,subject of thepresent decision, and Paul Wicht, case number 96, a highly regarded Bronxville High School science teacher who had taught at Byram Hills High for eight years,

Wicht, from the very beginning has maintained that he was induced and entrapped, and that he is innocent of the charges for which he was tried. He was found guilty, after jury trial, before Supreme Court Justice Lester Adler several months ago, a conviction that is the subject of an appeal application currently before that judge. Wicht’s motion to vacate his conviction is primarily based upon a glaring Brady violation, the intentional withholding of exculpatory information by the Prosecution, in his case, not only from the jury and the Defense, but also from the Court, despite Adler’s specific request for it from the Prosecutor.

Specifically, Wicht’s motion charges that Pirro’s Office lied to the Court when asked if all of the e-mails allegedly sent by the Defendant to the “victim,” had, in fact, been presented in evidence. From amongst scores of e-mails, the first 23 of which were actually exchanged between the socalled victim, and her former teacher, none of which contained any criminally culpable content, followed by many more, actually instigated, and criminalized first, by detectives from the North Castle Police Department, and then, by Pirro’s undercover sting operators, number 23 was intentionally kept from the jury as well as the Court.

During pre-trial hearings before County Court Judge Robert DiBella, Wicht had succeeded in compelling the Prosecution to release a “mirror image” of the hard drive from his seized computer, knowing full-well that his original e-mail correspon-dences with his former student, instigated by the student, had contained nothing inappropriate, and were, in fact, beneficial. Wicht was confident that once the jury was exposed to the last of his e-mails to her, number 23, in which he had specifically suggested that it would be best to end the correspondence, and then proceeded to do precisely that, that the enticement and entrapment by the police and Mrs. Pirro’s operatives would become obvious, and evident.

In short, it was no coincidence that Pirro’s Office omitted the one e-mail correspondence, out of scores of them, that would most likely have established Wicht’s innocence and convinced the jury that he had been induced and entrapped. It is because he and his family had the courage and fortitude to stand up for the truth, and were willing, and able, to pursue justice by rejecting any, and all, plea offers, instead going to trial, that Paul Wicht now stands eligible to benefit from the present Appellate Division Decision.

Unfortunately, there are numerous other men, who under similar circumstances, were unlawfully induced, and entrapped by Pirro’s “slime brigade,” and fell prey to the pressure and intimidation of her extreme prosecutorial misconduct, her Internet Sex Stink. This tactic was designed to distract and deflect attention from her and her husband’s unlawful conduct. For those who knuckled under, and accepted the usual, “no jailtime” plea offer, Kozlow offers no legal remedy.

Nevertheless, for those who stood up for their own innocence, and, in a broader sense, for the community at large, the People of Westchester, indeed, the People of New York State, the Kozlow Decision, represents still further evidence that Jeanine Pirro’s reign of terror is in it’s final fleeting moments. For the issue to involve the “Crown Jewel” of her unending self-promotional propaganda, the Internet Sex Sting, is clearly devastating to her current political effort.

However, of equal importance is the recognition by State and Federal Tribunals of the magnitude and frequency of prosecutorial misconduct perpetrated by the Pirro Regime, not only in her Internet operation, but throughout her practices over twelve years as DA. For the many innocent police officers and civilians, maliciously, and intentionally prosecuted and imprisoned over that time Koslow is the promise of Justice tomorrow.