In 1990, the Palladium murder case against Olmeda Hidalgo and David Lemus was big news. Outside the Palladium nightclub, known for drugs and hard-partying, they were accused of gunning down the bouncer. It looked open and shut at the time.
But in 2003, evidence suggested that the defendants were innocent, and the matter made it to a hearing in 2005. ADA Daniel Bibb, one of the most senior trial lawyers in Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau’s office, was put in charge of the investigation.
From the New York Times :
Mr. Bibb said he shared his growing doubts with his superiors. And at a meeting in early 2005, he recalled, after defense lawyers won court approval for a hearing into the new evidence, he urged that the convictions be set aside. “I made what I considered to be my strongest pitch,” he said.
Instead, he said, he was ordered to go to the hearing, present the government’s case and let a judge decide — a strategy that violated his sense of a prosecutor’s duty.
But Dan Bibb, who looks much more like a cop than a lawyer, had been in the office for too long, and had enough.
[Dan Bibb] threw the case. Unwilling to do what his bosses ordered, he said, he deliberately helped the other side win.
He tracked down hard-to-find or reluctant witnesses who pointed to other suspects and prepared them to testify for the defense. He talked strategy with defense lawyers. And when they veered from his coaching, he cornered them in the hallway and corrected them.
“I did the best I could,” he said. “To lose.”
I know Dan pretty well, and I find it almost impossible to believe. Not that he did the right thing; He was a stand-up guy. But he was a company man. He was a lifer. That he would actively work to undermine the prosecution is incredible.
Shortly after this case, Dan left the DAs office in disgust. I found out when I saw him sitting in his regular seat at the bar at Forlini’s and we talked. He was trying his hand at doing some defense work for a small firm, and was having a hard time of it. It wasn’t really in his blood, though he had an epiphany that defending people wasn’t evil.
And what of the ethics of a prosecutor not merely throwing a case that he doesn’t believe in, but actively helping the defense? First, the Torquemada of the legal profession:
Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at the New York University School of Law, said he believed that Mr. Bibb had violated his obligation to his client, and could conceivably face action by a disciplinary panel. “He’s entitled to his conscience, but his conscience does not entitle him to subvert his client’s case,” Mr. Gillers said. “It entitles him to withdraw from the case, or quit if he can’t.”
Even Torquemada can be right every once in a while. And what does the defense lawyer think?
But Mr. Mehler, the defense lawyer, said Mr. Bibb acted honorably. While lawyers on both sides must advocate for their clients, he said, “a prosecutor has an additional duty to search out the truth.
“I say that he lived up to that.”
And finally, what does Dan Bibb think of what he did?
Today, Mr. Bibb says he does not believe he crossed any line. “I didn’t work for the other side,” he said. “I worked for what I thought was the right thing.”
To appreciate how Bibb must have felt about being put in the position of prosecuting two men he believed to be innocent, consider this:
A close friend, Robert Mooney, a New York City police detective, said that if not for the Palladium case, Mr. Bibb “would have spent his entire professional life at the prosecutor’s office.
“He’s brokenhearted that he’s not doing this anymore.”
If I had to bet on anyone being a lifer for the prosecution, it would have been Dan Bibb.
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One of the shameful things I see here is this attorney’s superiors not listening to his pleas. If, as an experienced attorney, he felt these men were innocent, or that there should be more research and leg work down, why on earth would his superiors be willing to possibly put innocent men behind bars? It’s shameful that the government would employ individuals willing to ignore justice due to its inconvenience.
Reminds me of Ceballos v. Garcetti: You’re probably familiar with it, but I’m surprised how many criminal attorneys aren’t simply because it’s categorized as an “employment” case as it came up after Ceballos claimed he was demoted for workplace speech after he investigated the truth of an affidavit and disbelieved the affiant officer
When I was a p.d, I once had a police officer “throw” a case as she didn’t believe in it but couldn’t convince the prosecutor to dismiss. I wondered if she was later disciplined for her lack of “cooperation.”
Morgenthau Responds: No One Forced Bibb
When former ADA
Fraudelent prosecution is not the only miscarrage of justice going on in the DA s office , there is serous issues with out of title working conditions
If you watched any of the Dateline ID shows on the ID channel. Daniel Bibb was a typical arrogant, jerk. The ego’s of these DA’s from Manhattan should be enough to get them all thrown in jail. This Daniel Bibb was a brick wall against the one true hero of this case. Detective Bobby Addolorato went through hell trying to get these innocent men out of jail.
Bibb tries to make it sound like he was doing a whole lot more then he really did. He probably had gotten so many hate letters after people seen what a real jerk he was that he has been trying to make it look now like he was really helping the innocent.
The truth is he was, as he puts it “Doing my job!” Which means keeping his mouth shut and letting innocent men stay in prison for years so the Manhattan District Attorney’s office doesn’t have to admit they made a mistake.
But if you look at the record of any DA’s office you’ll know that being innocent or guilty means nothing to them. It is to win at all costs no matter who you hurt doing it!
They say we have the best law and the best system. If you looked at it through a microscope you would shudder in agony at the way innocent men are left in jail to rot so someone like District Attorney Robert Morgenthau can be re-elected.
It is WIN at all costs no matter what.
Read this little bit
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6913736/page/5/
I have one advantage that you won’t gain from a TV show. I know Dan Bibb pretty well. He was definitely a tough ADA, and some may well see him as an arrogant jerk, but he has integrity. Don’t assume that you know the “truth” because you watched it on TV.
TO SHG…and YOU shouldn’t ASSUME that that because you “KNOW” him personally that he is NOT arrogant. Most importantly you should not assume that someone’s integrity is ALWAYS in tact…ALL THE TIME. People often have multiple sides of their personality and often display behavior that is often “expected” and show other sides when they feel the are not under the “microscope”.
All true, but it still seems a bit better to draw conclusions about someone based on actual knowledge than ignorance. You may be right, that my take on Dan doesn’t preclude his being arrogant in this instance or others. So are you advocating assumptions based on ignorance, or better yet, a TV show?
I couldn’t agree more with Joel Reid’s comments. Hats off to Addoloranto and all who will not cross the line regardless of any price! People such as Addoloranto should be running this country.
I worked a lot of cases with Dan Bibb, and I know just about every prosecutor in that office that knows him personally. Dan Bibb is as honest as honest gets. I can’t stress it any stronger than that.
I can’t believe I missed this one.
Stephen Gillers is a moron. The government isn’t the DA’s “client”. There is no attorney client privilege attaching to anything they do in their official job. That’s why they have a duty to disclose exculpatory evidence. That’s why if they find their chief complaining witness has been lying to them they can turn around and prosecute the witness.
This is such a fundamental and obvious intellectual error I can’t believe some law professor makes it, to the point of saying that the prosecutor here should be “disciplined”? What a load of crap.
The only issue for discipline is his superiors. They can’t hand off their responsibility to a judge or a jury. If they know the case shouldn’t be prosecuted then they stop prosecuting it. It’s very simple. If they proceed despite knowing it’s bogus, then depending how serious the matter is they should maybe be disbarred.
No wonder Bibb quit in disgust. Good for him.
Prosecutors are not just uber-cops, higher ups on the law enforcement team. They’re lawyers. They have an obligation to insure the system’s integrity.
Hard to do that when they don’t have any themselves, I guess.
You had me at “Stephen Gillers is a moron.”
I just saw the Dateline show on the Palladium murder case. The ADA isn’t the one everyone should be angry with, it’s the DA himself. I thought there was no statute of limitation on murder. So why did they refuse to prosecute the actual killer after all this? Two innocent men spend over ten years in jail and the actual shooter is never arrested?!!! He must have been an informant. The difficulty Addolorato, and his partner had in the police department, the reluctance of the DA’s office to release the two that were falsely accused. This “Spanky” guy must have been to valuable on the street. It’s just disgusting.
This conduct is not a surprise. As a former Manhattan A.D.A., I saw firsthand, what the previous writers have said: that the attitude was win at all cost; rack up convictions; truth and fairness be damned. I myself resigned from a case where I believed the defendant was innocent, but my superiors wanted me to go forward anyway. Then after I left the office and they gave it another assistant, they dismissed the case, I guess so he wouldn’t have to stick his neck on the block. Just look at what happened in the Central Park jogger case. Five young men were railroaded for rape and assault even though none of their DNA matched, and there was a serial pattern rapist that was known to the office. Fairstein and Lederer could care less. In fact Fairstein ran interference at the precinct so that illegal false confessions could be extracted from these teenagers. Then thirteen years later, after years had been spent in jail, and lives ruined, the D.A.’s office had to go back to court and vacate the convictions. How disgusting and thoroughly unethical is that?? Kudos to Dan Bibb. He should be given a medal.