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: Outside Counsel

By Bill Altreuter

Robert J. McCarthy and Michael Beebe's front page story in today's Buffalo News is as good an illustration of the importance of a local press as you are likely to find, and a fine example of what makes the Buffalo News a better than average paper. It may well be that the ADA who is accusing District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III of backing away from prosecuting "Democratic kingpin" G. Steven Pigeon has an ox to gore. I don't know Mark A. Sacha, but he's a career prosecutor who has worked for both Republican and Democratic DAs. Back when he was DA Judge Kevin Dillon thought enough of the guy to make him City Court bureau chief and then head of the district attorney's drug prosecution unit, and Judge Dillon's opinion counts for a lot with me. It is troubling to think that Frank Sedita is allowing politics to color his prosecutorial decisions, but this is not the first time in his nine month tenure that something has quacked like a duck. During the campaign Sedita was quoted as saying "Every time some political operative or political partisan makes an accusation it doesn't trigger a special prosecutor." Maybe it ought to.

It's not like I think it would be a swell idea for a Republican candidate to capture the DA's office next go-round. The last time the Erie County Republican party produced a prosecutor we got Dennis Vacco, a poltroon of the first water, who surrounded himself with politically connected hacks and henchmen. Caesar's wife, Frank.

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on September 27, 2009 (boomark / email).