It happened again last Friday. Keston Brown was at the wheel of a Gristedes van on E. 37th Street when he jumped the curb and ran over two women. Miraculously, one of them, Tassia Katsiambanis, survived. But her co-worker Ysemny Ramos, a young mother planning that night's celebration of her wedding anniversary and the upcoming birth of another child, died at the scene. Brown was found to be intoxicated and was charged with DWI, manslaughter and assault.
About an hour earlier on the Upper West Side, a yellow cab driver
jumped the curb at Amsterdam and W. 106th Street, careening onto the sidewalk and into a pizzeria. Seven people were injured, one critically. Despite this, and though witnesses said he was racing another car to the intersection before the crash, the cabbie walked away scot-free.
How can this be? How can New York drivers destroy, kill and maim with impunity -- almost always when sober, and even if, in some cases, they aren't?
In part two of our interview with veteran vehicular crimes prosecutor Maureen McCormick (read part one here), the former Brooklyn ADA, now with Nassau County, offers more insight into the state of traffic justice in New York State, and describes how she and others in the prosecutorial community are working to strengthen laws that deal with negligent drivers.
Brad Aaron: There were a couple of recent high-profile cases in which Manhattan
pedestrians were killed by hit-and-run drunk drivers. One case ended
with a guilty plea resulting in a two year prison sentence, while in
the other, also following a plea, the driver received a sentence of
just 15 days. Nassau County, meanwhile, is successfully prosecuting
killer drunk drivers for murder, with commensurate sentencing. In your
experience, what could explain such discrepancies?
Maureen McCormick: [Nassau] District
Attorney Kathleen Rice has made traffic justice one of her top
priorities. She campaigned on holding DWI defendants accountable for
their actions and she has created policies and pursued prosecutions
that demonstrate her continued commitment to this issue. In the first
year she took office she held 66 percent of Driving While Intoxicated
(DWI) offenders to the top count of their charges while the New York
State average was 44 percent. She increased jail sentences from 10
percent to 16 percent and she has maintained an overall conviction rate
of 94 percent.
The DWI/murder case against Martin Heidgen was recently
the subject of a "60 Minutes" report. Heidgen drove more than three
miles the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway with a blood alcohol
concentration of .28 before slamming head on into a wedding limousine,
killing the driver, 59-year-old Stanley Rabinowitz, and decapitating
7-year-old flower girl Katie Flynn. Heidgen was convicted of depraved
indifference murder in 2006 and sentenced to 18 years to life.
Read more...