Only in New York (Part 5)

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...

Stated quite accurately and eloquently back in 1947 by the late, great British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, this philosophy could easily be applied to the US justice system as well.
Yes, the US Justice System, a sometimes-rickety, sputtering 200-year-old relic, but no one has yet invented anything better.

Despite all the warts and flaws in our system of justice, it does limp along and, for the most part, usually gets it right.

Oh, there have been times when our judicial system has resembled a three-ring circus, complete with “court jesters” performing balancing acts on the scales of justice, somersaults with the evidence, and even magic tricks with the truth, as defendants, often without even a safety net, walk a tightrope of so-called presumed innocence.

But it is often we the people who are the real clowns in the center ring, with our hard-earned tax dollars paying for these wacky proceedings.

The all-time Greatest Show on Earth—which should have earned a reverse Oscar, Emmy, Clio, Grammy and Tony award for the absolute worst judicial circus ever has to be, in my opinion, the OJ Simpson murder trial, back in 1995.

If the circumstances at this so-called trial hadn’t been so tragic, the symbols and remnants left in its wake would not be referred to as a circus but, more appropriately, theater of the absurd.

This fiasco had it all: fleeing Broncos, dancing Itos and goofy Katos, all of whom played leading roles in the bizarre spectacle known as People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson.

In this alleged trial of the century, there were magic acts with “gloves that didn’t fit” and “dogs that didn’t bark.” There were Dream Teams of contortionists disguised as lawyers, twisting the truth with lots of abbreviations from OJ and AC to DNA, DOA, LAPD and the “N word”.

But the “end words” for OJ would come to be “not guilty,” and this time the “Juice” wasn’t running through airports even or even off-right tackle, he simply walked out of the big (circus) tent when he should walked straight to the big house—the California State Penitentiary, that is.

Sometimes our justice system performs a double back-flip somersault, and just the opposite occurs.

In Massachusetts in 1920, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested, tried, and, despite having alibis and no criminal record, they were convicted, based on very flimsy evidence, and executed for the murder of two men during a robbery in South Braintree, a Boston suburb. Many historians believe the two were prosecuted solely for their political views. The judge at their trial, Webster Thayer, allegedly referred to the two as “anarchist bastards.”

Sometimes our justice system can seem paralyzed, even when the defendant admits his guilt.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were indicted for shooting their parents—Jose and Kitty Menendez—while the couple was watching TV in their Beverly Hills home, back in August 1989. The two men—Lyle was 21 and Erik 18 at the time of the murders—pleaded not guilty to the crime, claiming they were sexually abused by their father and neglected by their mother. Relying on what has come to be known as the “abuse excuse,” incredibly, their first trial ended in two hung juries (one for each defendant).

It is often said that “chutzpah” is best defined by someone who kills their parents and then pleads for mercy because they’re an orphan. For Lyle and Erik, their chutzpah wasn’t too kosher the second time around. Our “boys” were retried, convicted, and are now serving life sentences in separate California State prisons.

In 1978, San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White, who had recently resigned from his position, approached Mayor George Moscone and demanded to be reinstated. When Moscone refused, White shot him a “mere” four times, fatally wounding the popular mayor. White then walked down the hall to the office of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold public office, and just to prove he was not homophobic, White calmly reloaded his revolver and shot Harvey Milk five times instead.

At Dan White’s trial, his defense attorney argued that he was suffering from “diminished capacity,” a defense that was permissible in California at that time. Known as the “Twinkie Defense,” White’s lawyers argued that he suffered from depression and was therefore incapable of any premeditation. A psychiatrist testified that White was addicted to junk food and that too much sugar could have had an effect on the brain and worsened White’s depression.

It has often been said that the US is tilted, and all the loose ends roll to California.

The so-called Twinkie Defense worked: the jury found White guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, sentencing him to only six years at California’s Soledad State Prison for the double slaying. In the end, however, the wise people from the great state of California were proven right after all (how’s that for backpedaling?). A year after White was paroled, he likely ate a super-sized box of Twinkies before running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe to the inside of his car, and peacefully checked out of this world—the victim not of too much sugar this time, but too much carbon monoxide. Dan should have had a V8 instead.

Proving that California does not have the monopoly on courtroom absurdities or loose ends, in 1969, Illinois judge Julius Hoffman, in what was called the trial of the Chicago Seven (originally the Chicago Eight), presided over a rambunctious trial of legendary radical defendants Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner. The defendants were charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot and other charges related to protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois, at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Unable to contain Seale’s outbursts, taunts and insults, Judge Hoffman bound and gagged Bobby Seale, then severed him from the trial, sentencing him to four years in prison for contempt. The other seven were ultimately acquitted of conspiracy charges by a jury, but five of the defendants were found guilty of inciting to riot. Judge Hoffman gave each of the five the maximum penalty, five years in prison and a fine of five thousand dollars.

Additionally, Judge Hoffman sentenced all seven defendants, and their lawyers as well, to lengthy jail terms for contempt of court. The Court of Appeals for the great state of Illinois reversed all of the contempt and inciting to riot convictions, declaring the court had not sufficiently measured the biases of the jury, and because of Judge Hoffman’s “deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense.”

And finally, in the really great states of New York and New Jersey, we also had our own circus trial, which combined a little of all of the above, and more. Brothers on trial, lots of chutzpah, defendants fleeing from justice—not in white Broncos to Mexico, but on white jets to Israel—abuse excuses and a blame-it-all-on-the-parents defense. There were Dream Teams of lawyers, which included our now-secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, all appearing together in another circus trial, complete with a bumbling judge who would make Judge Judy look like Oliver Wendell Holmes.

But the defendant this time wasn’t addicted to Twinkies; he was addicted to money. He was Eddie Antar, founder and former CEO of the Crazy Eddie chain of stores.

Thankfully, no one died in the debacle caused by the collapse of the Crazy Eddie retail chain back in the late ‘80s, but a lot of shareholders and vendors did get slaughtered in what remains to this day the biggest fraud in the consumer electronics industry.

Eddie started with a single store in the late ’70s (part 1), and built the chain into one of the most successful retailers in the Northeast with clever advertising, low prices and well-stocked and well-managed stores. Despite his street-tough, foul-mouthed, hard-boiled Brooklyn demeanor, Eddie, whom I would call on from time to time as Maxell’s Regional Manager, was brilliant at marketing and crafted an image that would grow the chain into 43 beautiful stores, with over 300 million dollars in revenue.

He once remarked to me: “I may look like a whore but run [the stores] like a virgin.”

Eddie, though, was both a bit nutty and a lot slutty when it came to money. He wasn’t addicted to sex, or even gambling or drugs for that matter, but he was addicted to money. Worth an estimated 100 million dollars, no amount of money seemed good enough for Eddie (see part 4).

Like any addiction, greed can overcome your sense of reason and lead to disastrous behavior.

After skimming off millions of dollars in cash, fraudulently inflating the inventory (part 3), manipulating the stock and engaging in insider trading—earning 74 million dollars in the process—Eddie then fled to Israel, a fugitive from justice. He was indicted on 19 counts, captured in a small town just outside Tel Aviv, eventually waived extradition and returned to the US to face trial.

Along with his two brothers, Mitchell and Allen, Eddie went on trial on June 15, 1993, in Federal Court in Newark, New Jersey.

At the trial, Eddie’s defense attorney used both the abuse excuse and diminished capacity (à la the Menendez “boys” and Dan White respectively), alleging his family took advantage of “a troubled man’s alcoholism and depression.”
“A family business became a corporate battlefield, with boardroom intrigues, duplicity, hostility and distrust among family members,” said Jack Arsenault, Eddie’s attorney.

Count Chertoff, as he was deviously referred to by the Antars, countered by putting on the witness stand a string of family members and employees, who testified that it was Eddie whose “count was devious,” often changing a “1” to a “4” or adding a zero at the end of the final inventory number.

The presiding judge at the trial was none other than US District Judge Nicholas Politan, a no-nonsense federal judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Known for his unbending rules, Judge Politan became a lightning rod here in New Jersey, and nationally, when he compared public notification upon the release of convicted sex offenders as similar to the Nazi practice of making Jews wear a Star of David during World War II.

And the good judge didn’t have a good sense of humor, either.

When Eddie’s cousin Sam Antar joked during his testimony that the reason they had to make several trips to Israel, often involving multiple participants (see part 2), to smuggle money out of the country, was “a million dollars was [just] too much to fit in one suitcase.” Judge Politan, it was reported, was not amused.

What was not amusing either and, in fact, quite tragic, was that on the second day of Eddie’s trial, one of his five daughters—only 19 at the time—passed away, succumbing to cancer. Eddie begged Judge Politan for permission to attend his daughter’s funeral. Politan, concerned about Eddie being a flight risk, once again, suggested that Eddie sign over 60 million dollars he had hidden in foreign bank accounts. “Putting up the money, as a sign of good faith, might sway an old judge’s heart,” Politan suggested. Eddie screamed at the judge, “[So] the price of my daughter is 60 million?”

Eddie was allowed to attend the girl’s funeral, but was immediately returned to jail, observing the traditional period of mourning called Shivah (“the seven days”) alone in his cell.

After 19 days of trial, the case was submitted to the jury on July 15, 1993. Five days of bitter exchanges and acrimony followed before the jury finally reached a verdict. Eddie was found guilty on 17 of the 19 counts, his brother Mitchell on six counts, and brother Allen acquitted on all counts.
After returning the guilty verdicts, two jurors seemed to regret their decision.

But Politan had no regrets. He sentenced Eddie to 12-1/2 years in prison and ordered him to pay 121 million dollars in restitution.
Politan sentenced Mitchell to a little over four years in prison and ordered him to pay 3 million dollars in restitution.

Eddie immediately filed an appeal, criticizing Judge Politan for the belligerent and prejudicial way he’d presided over the trial. At the sentencing hearing, Politan supplied Eddie with plenty of ammunition to use during his appeal.

“My object in this case from day one has always been to get back to the public that which was taken from it as a result of the fraudulent activities of this defendant and others,” stated Politan.

Eddie’s defense team pounced on this “from day one” statement. They argued in their briefs: “[Politan] admits here that he had decided the defendant’s guilt at the outset.”

The court of appeals agreed with the defense’s argument. In April 1995, the Third U.S. Appeals Court in Philadelphia overturned Eddie and Mitchell’s convictions.

At last, in September 1996, almost ten years after he resigned from his company and became a fugitive from justice, Eddie accepted a plea bargain, admitted he defrauded his investors, and left the courtroom owing 150 million dollars in fines and restitution, as well as judgments facing him in civil decisions, which would eventually exceed a billion dollars.
In February of 1997, Judge Harold A. Ackerman of the New Jersey District Court reduced Eddie’s sentence to six years and ten months in a federal penitentiary. At the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, NY, a medium security facility, Eddie often worked long hours helping to preparing halal and kosher meals for the facility’s Muslim and Jewish inmates respectively.

Up until 1999, an SEC team and lawyers in a class-action lawsuit continued to look for Eddie’s assets, an estimated 135 million dollars.

The courts ultimately declared that investors had lost at least 145.9 million dollars, one of the nation’s largest frauds at the time.

Nearly 60 years old now, Eddie is out of prison, remarried and has finally had a son he named Sam—most likely after his father, Sam Antar, whom I only met a few times, but nonetheless always respected and felt was a kind and decent man.

Eddie was in many ways a tragic figure, done in by his own greed. It was reported that he was last seen clerking at a Computer World store in New Jersey, although it is difficult for me to imagine the brilliant Crazy Eddie Antar, wearing a light blue jacket with a little name tag that says “Hello, I’m Eddie, may I help you,” asking customers “would you like to purchase an extended warranty with that new laptop?”

It must also be difficult for Eddie to imagine that if it hadn’t been for his greed, he would probably have owned that Computer World store, and possibly Circuit City and Best Buy, too.

The end.