By Dan Murphy–this story has been edited
Jeanine Pirro’s latest book, “Liars, Leakers and Liberals,” recently landed as number one on the New York Times best sellers list, a feat that some of us who have covered Pirro over her 25 years in politics in Westchester and New York State find baffling. As one of my friends posted on Facebook, part of her success is due to the fact that “Conservative personalities have more devout followers, despite being smaller in numbers. Michael Savage books even sell really well.”
Another reason for her success may be that we can’t stop talking about her, even those who don’t agree with her and don’t appreciate the damage she left behind as a district attorney in Westchester from 1993 to 2005. One of my journalistic colleagues, WVOX morning radio host Bob Marrone, when we recently discussed a story on Pirro and Whoopi Goldberg that I wrote to show how divided our country has come, said he can’t read the book or watch her on television because of what she did, or didn’t to, for Jeffrey Deskovic.
Deskovic was wrongfully convicted at the age of 17 of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Peekskill in 1989. Authorities knew his DNA did not match that of the actual perpetrator – who, three years later, went on to murder another young woman and mother of two – but rogue police officers, prosecutors, and other law enforcement personnel knowingly and maliciously accused, prosecuted, and eventually secured his conviction.
Finally, in 2006, after 16 years in prison, then-D.A. Janet DiFiore agreed to the release, and retesting of DNA evidence that freed Deskovic. Three Westchester D.A.s were involved in Deskovic’s case in a meaningful way: Carl Vergari, whose office sent an innocent Deskovic to prison, DiFiore, and Jeanine Pirro.
We spoke to Deskovic to discuss Pirro’s recent successes and the work he is doing. “Pirro projects herself as a law-and-order person who is completely against injustice, based on her background as a judge and D.A.,” he said. “But in reality, her office preserved unlawful convictions like my case.”
Pirro has been asked dozens of times, both during her tenure as D.A. and after, about the Deskovic case. Her standard reply is, “I was not the D.A. at the time of that case and trial.”
But what Deskovic’s legal narrative shows is that then-D.A. Pirro was involved in his appeal and request to open and retest evidence with DNA evidence, but stood opposed to reopening the case every step of the way.
“That is correct,” replied Deskovic, about Vergari, and not Pirro being D.A. during his trial. “But my first of seven appeals began when she first took office as D.A. I was arguing my innocence based on DNA evidence in 1994, which her office had. It was her office that fought against my innocence claims and appeals.”
Deskovic’s first appeal, asking the court to overturn his conviction based on DNA evidence and the fact that his Fifth Amendment rights were denied through a brutal and unlawful interrogation, went nowhere.
Three years later, Pirro’s office agrees to the exoneration of Mt. Vernon resident Terry Chalmers, who was serving seven years on a rape conviction that he did not commit, based on DNA evidence. After Chalmers release, Pirro’s office issues a statement defending the exoneration.
“I became aware of that case and wrote Pirro a letter explaining the similarities with my case, and the DNA evidence that would exonerate me. I asked for an interview in person and I wanted to explain what happened to me in the interrogation room. In a quick and rude response, her office declined to further DNA testing and refused an interview,” said Deskovic.
The following year, 1998, Deskovic files a Habaes Corpus petition, but his attorney files the petition four days late, based on the advice of a court clerk. Instead of allowing the court to hear Deskovic’s arguments and petition, Pirro’s office argued that the case should be dismissed without review based on the late filing, and the court adopted her argument.
Deskovic appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals, whose justices included a Judge Sotomayor, who is now on the U.S. Supreme Court. “My lawyer argued against a procedural ruling that my filing was late due to the court clerk’s incorrect advice and that it would cause a miscarriage of justice and that reversing the ruling would open the door to more sophisticated DNA testing,” said Deskovic. “Once again, Pirro’s office fought against me and the court, including Judge Sotomayor, agreed with her and I stayed in prison.”
Pirro’s office argued against Deskovic’s final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which did not hear his case, and in total, argued in the seven appeals filings that Deskovic, through his attorneys, made to see his release and exoneration.
“She had a moral responsibility to review my case, or at least to allow the new DNA evidence and testing to be used, but instead she kept the ball rolling against me,” said Deskovic. “The DNA databank began in 1997-98. If she had agreed to further testing then, I could have been home eight or nine years earlier.”
Deskovic also recalled other cases that Pirro was involved in that should tarnish her image as a Fox and Trump favorite. Selwyn Days was tried five times, and served 16 years in prison, for the double murder in Eastchester of Archie Harris and his aide Betty Ramcharan in 1996. He was exonerated and released from prison in 2017. He was convicted in 2001 after he falsely confessed to the murder after a long police interrogation. Pirro’s office prosecuted the first case.
The Richard DiGuglielmo Jr. case in Dobbs Ferry is one that sticks out in this reporter’s mind, and also in Deskovic’s, as a wrongful conviction. In 1996, DiGuglielmo, an off-duty NYPD officer, was at his father’s deli, when his dad got into a violent confrontation with Charles Campbell over a parking spot.
Campbell ended up taking out a baseball bat and striking DiGuglielmo Sr., breaking his arm. As he raised the bat again to strike him in the head, DiGuglielmo Jr. shot and killed Campbell. Pirro won a conviction of DiGugllelmo for second-degree murder, and the case has continued with his release and then return to prison where he remains today.
“You have an off-duty cop that shoots and kills a bat-wielding man who is about to hit his dad in the head after fracturing his hand,” said Deskovic. “What was he supposed to do? Watch his father die? Witnesses spent four nights and were being urged to change their story from self-defense to unjustifiable shooting. Her office withheld that information. Judge Bellantoni overturned the conviction, but he is still in jail.”
One of the things that bothers Deskovic is that Pirro has never apologized for her role in keeping him in jail an extra nine years for a crime he didn’t commit. “She has never acknowledged that her office did wrong, or that we learned a lesson from this case where we went wrong, nothing. But I still want that apology,” he said.
In fact, nobody directly involved in the case – from the police officers to the public defender to the medical examiner, all who played an illegal role in Deskovic’s conviction – have ever apologized. Only D.A. DiFiore on announcing Deskovic’s release, and Judge Molea, who ordered his release, apologized after he served 16 years in prison.
Deskovic says that when she sees Pirro on TV: “I just turn the channel in disgust. The false image that she portrays bothers me. She talks the talk but didn’t walk the walk here in Westchester and especially in my case. I don’t think she should be on the air. Her husband Al went to prison for tax evasion for tax returns that she signed. She also wanted Bernie Kerick to illegally tape-record her husband. But now we are all supposed to take her views on TV seriously.”
Deskovic has turned his life around since his release in 2006. He founded the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which works on unlawful convictions and has worked to release seven persons. He is also in the final year of law school at Pace in White Plains. “It’s ironic that Pace law school is a few blocks away from the courthouse where it all went wrong for me,” he said.
Deskovic keeps a very busy schedule, including law school, as a commentator and guest speaker on wrongful convictions across the country. He is also part of a coalition of statewide attorneys, and former exonerees who are urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo to create a Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct, which would be an independent body that would oversee and review the power of prosecutors.
Deskovic now lives in the Bronx and recently went to his high school reunion in Peekskill, for the Class of 1992, a graduating class that he was unable to attend because he was in prison for a crime he did not commit. At the age of 44, he remains unmarried and in-between the lives of a middle-aged person, and someone in their 20s, which were the years he lost in prison.
“I feel like I’m 25,” he said. “It’s been hard putting together a social life. People my age don’t want to go to an amusement park or throw a ball around. That’s the piece of my life that’s missing and where I feel that I’m still paying for the wrongful conviction.”
So, when you watch our former D.A. rant and rave on Fox, remember what she did, or did not do, for Jeffrey Deskovic while she was D.A. here in Westchester.
Editor’s note: As we go to press, Pirro’s book has dropped from number one to number two on the NY Times best seller’s list. Her colleague on Fox News, Greg Jarrett, is now number one with his book, “The Russia Hoax.”
