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![]() Prior rulings have made the definition of honest services fraud hard to land a conviction.īenjamin was selected from the state Senate by Gov. Supreme Court has raised the threshold in similar public corruption cases. Migdol died in February and was set to be a key witness in the case. Benjamin will be vindicated in this case, which never should have been brought.”įederal prosecutors will still have a high bar to clear in the Benjamin case. Benjamin did nothing other than engage in routine fundraising and support a non-profit providing needed resources to Harlem public schools,” Berke said. “We conclude that the indictment sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo,” the federal appeals court found.īarry Berke, an attorney for Benjamin, said in a statement the allegations against the former LG are false. Real estate developer Gerald Migdol pleaded guilty in 2022 and testified he donated to the Benjamin campaign in return for a $50,000 grant from the state to a nonprofit. Brian Benjamin is back on.Ī three-judge panel on Friday reversed a lower court’s 2022 ruling that dropped the most serious fraud and bribery charges Benjamin faced.īenjamin, 47, was previously accused of taking part in a bribery scheme when he ran for New York City comptroller in 2021. | Seth Wenig/APīAD FOR BENJAMIN: The corruption case against former Lt. Brian Benjamin can continue, a judge ruled today. “And I think it’s about time we recognize hypocrisy is not needed in our criminal codes.” - Bill MahoneyĪ corruption case against former Lt. “More likely than not, the people who are the most agitated about this kind of a bill are the people who are going to commit the crime in the first place,” Lavine said. So why hasn’t there been any movement on the subject? It might just be too obscure to attract too much focus.īut there may also be an unwillingness to appear lax on morality in a state government where sexual misconduct has brought down a long list of elected officials over the years. I don’t know if it’s a crime,” said New York State Catholic Conference executive director Dennis Poust. There seems to be no opposition to the bill: “Adultery is a sin. ![]() Its proposal has existed as legislation in most of the sessions since then. Somebody could theoretically sit in jail for 90 days for that - that’s kind of like wearing the modern day scarlet letter.”Ī legislative commission tasked with modernizing the penal code recommended removing the law from the books in 1964. “The government shouldn’t get involved in that type of business. “It’s an issue of privacy between spouses and whoever else is involved,” Degnan said. The first person to face charges under the law was a Coney Island investor who abandoned his wife to abscond with “a salesgirl in the millinery department of a department store.” But it has since become one of the most arbitrarily applied laws on the books: Only about a dozen New Yorkers have been charged over the past half century.īatavia attorney Brian Degnan says it was the type of outdated statute his law school professor “joked around about.”īut he wound up becoming the only lawyer in recent New York history with direct experience in this section of statute: A client was an international punchline in 2010 after she was charged with the crime following a tryst with a coworker. The law has been on the books since 1907, and it appears to have been written as an attempt to reduce the number of divorces back when adultery was the only path to a legal separation. “It’s a celebration of someone’s concept of their own morality.” “It doesn’t serve as a deterrent,” Lavine said. ![]() “So they’re left to a judge to make the determination.” A conviction can lead to three months in jail and a $500 fine. “Anybody who’s charged with adultery, because it’s only a B misdemeanor, isn’t entitled to a jury trial,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint,” Chair Jeff Dinowitz replied.īut it’s not a laughing matter to bill sponsor Chuck Lavine. Members of the Assembly Codes Committee facetiously made remarks like “That’s a crime?” and “Uh-oh” when the bill came up for a vote Tuesday. And there’s certainly some irony to the fact that this bill has stalled for 60 years in a state government where the Seventh Commandment has historically not always been held in the highest esteem. The bill would remove the crime of adultery from the books. One of the oldest pieces of legislation in Albany showed signs of life for the first time in decades this week. Some lawmakers said it's time to repeal the 1907 law. New York still has a law on the books that makes adultery a crime.
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