Alfonse D'Amato

Kate Murray is the proven leader Nassau County needs

Posted

On Nov. 3, the voters of Nassau County will elect a new district attorney for the first time since 2005. I’m supporting Kate Murray, because she’s a proven leader, and not a lawyer who has never led.

Her opponent, Acting District Attorney Madeline Singas, took control of the office after then D.A. Kathleen Rice won her Congressional race last November. Over the past few months, I’ve become familiar with Singas’s record, and can tell you that in her case, experience does not make a leader.

Singas has shown a number of times that she will waiver on tough issues facing our communities, including the very important issue of domestic abuse. While head of the Special Victims Unit, she presided over the case People v. Biggio, in which a wife was threatened over and over again that she would “have her throat slashed” and “have a bullet put in the back of her head” by her abusive husband. The complaint listed at least four instances in which the victim was physically abused by her husband.

Singas refused to bring the case to trial, claiming that the victim provoked her husband and therefore was not believable. Provoked? When is that ever a valid reason for a husband to threaten his wife?

This case was so poorly handled that the courts excoriated the district attorney’s office for severely mishandling the presentation to the grand jury. According to an article in Newsday, “Judge: Abuse case must go to trial,” a Nassau 1st District Court judge ordered the D.A.’s office to bring the accused man to trial.

Do we want a district attorney who doesn’t protect victims of domestic violence?

More recently, a startling New York Post article reported that Singas’s top administrator, Jeffrey Stein, is a sexual deviant whose shocking and disgusting abusive behaviors have caused his estranged wife to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Singas has yet to fire Stein. Kate Murray said, “The district attorney’s office is the place where victims of domestic abuse come for protection. I call on Ms. Singas to take immediate action and dismiss this high-level member of her team.”

These are the types of people being protected by Singas and her office.

Page 1 / 2