In a stunning move that reveals the turmoil inside lame-duck
Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes’ office, controversial rackets chief Michael Vecchione
kicked two veteran assistant district attorneys out of his bureau Friday
for
demanding he dismiss an evidence-challenged extortion case involving the
Orthodox Jewish community, The Post has learned.
Prosecutors Joseph Alexis and Nicholas Batsidis told
Vecchione their case against Sam Kellner, a Hasidic Jew accused of paying a
young man to make up sex-abuse claims against a Brooklyn cantor, had to be
dismissed because of a lack of evidence, a law-enforcement source said.
Vecchione — who in 2010 saw a high-profile murder conviction
overturned amid allegations he withheld evidence — told the men to speak with
Hynes or his first ADA, Amy Feinstein, before ordering them, “Get out,” the
source said.
When Alexis and Batsidis went to Feinstein, she immediately
told them they were off the case and reassigned both men to the trials bureau.
“Dismissal is the only decision that makes sense,” the
law-enforcement source said. “They want to leave it for the new administration
to dismiss.”
Hynes lost his re-election bid by a landslide to former
federal prosecutor Ken Thompson, who called the Kellner prosecution a “botched
case” during the campaign.
DA spokesman Jerry Schmetterer said, “Vecchione believes
there’s a case here and that it shouldn’t be dismissed,” but declined to
comment on personnel matters.
“In the dying days of the Hynes administration, Vecchione
has discarded the normal standards that govern prosecutions,” said Kellner’s
attorney, Niall MacGiollabhui, who confirmed that the two ADAs had been taken
off the case.
Hynes has been criticized over the past few years for going
soft on sexual-abuse prosecutions against Orthodox Jews.
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