Judge Resigns After Trying To Cover Up DWI Case

[samanthajane13]

Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita says State Supreme Court Judge Joseph Makowski and local attorney Anne Adams conspired to try and make a DWI case against Adams go away.

Last September, Makowski and Adams met for drinks at Shanghai Red's on the Buffalo waterfront.

Afterwards, Adams was driving home through Hamburg, with Makowski following behind her, when Adams was spotted driving erratically and was pulled over by police.

A breathalyzer test showed her blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit.

Despite that, Makowski in attempt to cover up the case, submitted a sworn statement to a judge saying that Adams' driving had been fine. He also stated that she had had only two drinks.

The following day, Adams, in her attempt to have the case against her dismissed, had her blood drawn.

By then, it showed just a trace amount of alcohol in her system, but Adams then claimed in a statement to the court that the blood had been drawn the night of her arrest.

Late Friday afternoon, Adams pled guilty to the DWI charge, as well another two charges related to her tampering with evidence (the blood test).

"Her conduct was disgraceful and she is now being held accountable for that conduct," said Sedita.

Makowski recanted his statement and resigned from the bench.

He will not face any criminal charges.

Scott Brown: "Knowing that Judge Makowski lied in his sworn statement, why not prosecute him?"

Sedita: "Under the law, if Judge Makowski chose to come before the grand jury and recant, there would be no criminal charges against him, so we fashioned a result where he recanted before the grand jury met, he must resign from the bench, and that means his reputation is disgraced."

Adams is scheduled to be sentenced in April, that sentence can range from probation, to two years in prison.

There's a chance that both Adams and Makowski could lose their licenses to practice law.

The bottom line says Sedita, "They tried to fix a case Scott, and they got caught."

This situation isn't sitting well with the local Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization.

Elizabeth Obad, The president of the Erie County M.A.D.D. chapter, calls this situation a disgrace and wants to see a stiff penalty for Adams when she is sentenced in April.

"We look up to our attorneys and our judges and expect them to enforce the law and I think it's horrible when someone who could have possibly been sitting on the bench and someone who was on the bench to do something like this," said Obad. "I think it's absolutely horrible and I would like to see some still penalties in this matter."


http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story...64345&catid=37

[samanthajane13]

UB Law School fires disgraced attorney
Adams removed after DWI plea
By Michael Beebe NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Anne E. Adams, who pleaded guilty Friday to three misdemeanors in an attempt to escape drunken driving charges and brought down a sitting State Supreme Court justice with her, has lost her job overseeing the trial technique program at the University at Buffalo Law School.

Dean Makau Mutua issued a brief statement Saturday evening announcing her termination.

“This is obviously a very sad episode in the legal profession in Buffalo,” Mutua said. “We at the University at Buffalo Law School are very concerned about ethics in the legal profession. We will take whatever action is necessary to protect both the integrity of the Law School and the legal profession at large.

“We have removed Anne Adams from her duties at the law school effective immediately,” the dean said.

Adams, 46, a former prosecutor, pleaded guilty before Erie County Judge Sheila A. DiTullio to three misdemeanors: drunken driving, offering a false instrument for filing and attempted tampering with physical evidence.

Resigning from the bench the same day was Joseph G. Makowski, 55, who had been a State Supreme Court justice for 10 years and had nearly four years left in his term. The job paid $136,700 a year.

Adam’s guilty pleas and Makowski’s resignation stem from her arrest on driving while intoxicated charges Sept. 2 after she had been at Shanghai Red’s restaurant on the Buffalo waterfront with Makowski. He said they were discussing her program at the law school.

Makowski did not mention why he resigned in his letter to Justice Sharon S. Townsend, administrative judge for the 8th Judicial District, but the district attorney who forced the resignation did not mince words.

“Because of his recantation and cooperation, I will not seek to brand Makowski a criminal,” District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said. “However, I am deeply troubled by Makowski’s original affidavit and initial conduct. Accordingly, Makowski, in lieu of criminal prosecution, will also be required to resign from the bench.”

Makowski’s testimony in an affidavit he submitted after Adams’ arrest was at odds with what witnesses told investigators from the district attorney’s office.

“Neither party to this pathetic episode committed violent crimes, nor have criminal records,” Sedita said. “By the same token, one of my most important duties as district attorney is to restore public confidence in the justice system. Accordingly, this type of misconduct, particularly on behalf of lawyers, judges and public officials, will not be tolerated and will not be overlooked by this office.”

Sedita said Adams attempted to cover up her crime, by talking her physician into changing the date of a blood test to show she was sober, because she wanted to be a judge.

“I would expect that, as a consequence of this plea, Ms. Adams may lose her license to practice law,” Sedita said.

Adams, who became a defense lawyer after she left the district attorney’s office, was paid about $70,000 a year to oversee the trial program at the law school.

mbeebe@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregio...548.html?imw=Y

[Parker]

A pair of losers. IMO. They deserve what they get. And lose. No-one should be above the law.

[samanthajane13]

Makowski's resignation as judge doesn’t preclude possible disbarment
By Patrick Lakamp
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

State Supreme Court Justice Joseph G. Makowski’s resignation doesn’t necessarily put off his day of reckoning with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

And a separate committee that could suspend or disbar Makowski has jumped on the case just days after the disgraced judge submitted his resignation letter under pressure from District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III.

Sedita said that although Makowski avoided a criminal charge, he could still be stripped of his license to practice law because of his attempt to help lawyer Anne E. Adams escape a drunken- driving charge.

Makowski’s testimony in an affidavit he submitted after Adams’ arrest in September was at odds with what witnesses told investigators from the Erie County district attorney’s office.

Sedita said he immediately notified the Attorney Grievance Committee of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court of Makowski’s circumstances.

“I got a letter from them asking that his file be promptly turned over to them, and it will be,” the district attorney said Tuesday.

Sedita has also said he would cooperate with the Commission on Judicial Conduct if it moves forward with its Makowski investigation, including turning over evidence his investigators have collected.

Makowski, 55, avoided a criminal charge Friday by recanting the affidavit, cooperating with prosecutors, agreeing to testify against Adams and resigning as a State Supreme Court justice.

The commission could still remove Makowski for cause, even though he has already submitted his resignation letter, effective March 5.

Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator and counsel, said state law allows the commission to remove a judge even after a resignation.

“After a judge resigns, the commission, under the law, has 120 days to complete removal proceedings against that judge,” he said. “There have been numerous occasions when we have done so in the past.”

A commission decision to remove a judge disqualifies that person from ever serving on the bench again, Tembeckjian said.

Makowski resigned in the wake of the commission’s investigation and a potential grand jury probe of written assertions he made while trying to clear Adams.

He had been at Shanghai Red’s restaurant on the Buffalo waterfront with Adams in the hours before her arrest.

Adams’ former attorney had filed the judge’s signed statement as part of a motion to dismiss the DWI case against her in Town of Hamburg Court.

Sedita required Makowski to give up the judgeship as part of an agreement not to prosecute him.

Adams pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated and two other misdemeanors related to her attempt to cover up her crime by talking her physician into changing the date of a blood test to show she was sober.

Sedita concluded that Makowski and Adams “tried to fix a case.”

News Political Reporter Robert J. McCarthy contributed to this report.


http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/589564.html

[samanthajane13]

Adams resigns as lawyer as legal problems mount
By Patrick Lakamp
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Anne E. Adams has resigned from practicing law and now is banned from appearing as an attorney. In a March 6 order, the Appellate Division struck Adams from the state’s roll of attorneys. Two weeks earlier, Adams had pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors for drunken driving and her role in trying to fix the case.

But her legal problems went beyond drunken driving and trying to tamper with evidence.

The Attorney Grievance Committee for the State Supreme Court’s Eighth Judicial District was ready to recommend formal disciplinary charges over the way Adams dealt with a client in a divorce case, according to documents obtained by The Buffalo News.

Adams, of Orchard Park, resigned before the committee’s scheduled March 26 meeting.

“Her resignation has the same effect on her license as a disbarment, and, consequently, no further action will be taken by this office regarding your complaint,” Guy C. Giancarlo, the committee’s associate counsel, wrote Thursday in a letter to the client. “However, in submitting her resignation, Ms. Adams admitted all of the allegations related to your complaint.”

John Elmore, the chairman of the Attorney Grievance Committee, would not comment on Adams’ case.

James P. Harrington, Adams’ attorney, confirmed her resignation but had no other comment.

Among the client’s allegations, Adams:

• Was paid $15,000, but she never provided a bill — despite requests over six years — or an accounting of her time spent on the case.

• Did not deposit separate checks worth $2,000 and $4,000 into a client trust account but cashed the checks through a teller at a local bank.

• Falsely claimed the divorce case file was destroyed in a fire rather than produce the file when the former client pursued formal procedures to get some of her money back.

• Brought forth untrue information when she unsuccessfully appealed to a State Supreme Court judge to overturn an arbitration panel’s decision that she owed the former client a $4,775 refund.

As part of the divorce settlement, the then-client received a $10,000 check from her former husband in August 2000.

But Adams took it and said it would be held in a trust account until another of the client’s minor legal issues was resolved. The woman tried for six years to get some of that money returned.

“That check was meant to be a settlement award to me and not an award of attorney’s fees,” the former client said in her formal complaint to the grievance committee. “I turned to Ms. Adams for counsel and advice during a terrible time in my life — not expecting that a member of the legal profession would further victimize me.”

The former client spoke only on condition of anonymity because she wants her privacy. The News agreed to her request because she has copies of court documents relating to the complaint that would not otherwise be available. The court system keeps them secret.

The former client said she had never sought legal counsel before her divorce.

She was in debt after her divorce and had an income of only about $22,000 a year.

“To take the money that the judge granted me as a settlement only makes her conduct more despicable,” the former client told the grievance committee.

In 2007, the former client won a nearly $5,000 refund from an arbitration panel, which heard the dispute between her and Adams. Adams then filed an appeal.

State Supreme Court Justice Kevin M. Dillon rejected Adams’ appeal and ordered Adams to pay the former client $4,825.

In the end, the former client paid $9,000 in attorney fees for her divorce and slightly more than $1,000 for four to six hours of legal work on related civil matters. She said her former husband paid his divorce lawyer $3,000. She and her former husband did not have children, and she did not seek an interest in her former husband’s business.

The former client also had to spend $1,800 in legal fees to contest Adams’ appeal.

The former client filed her complaint against Adams with the grievance committee after Adams lost the appeal.

“At that point, it wasn’t a matter of money,” the former client told The News. “I pursued it so that vulnerable women like me, in duress, don’t fall victim to her unethical practices.”

The former client said she decided to talk about her case — even after Adams’ resignation — because she does not want the public to think Adams’ legal problems stemmed from just the driving-while-intoxicated arrest last September.

She also praised the work of the grievance committee, whose lawyers “restored my faith in the judicial system.”

Adams pleaded guilty last month before Erie County Judge Sheila A. DiTullio to three misdemeanors: drunken driving, offering a false instrument for filing and attempted tampering with physical evidence.


http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregio...173.html?imw=Y

[samanthajane13]

Justice is served: Sedita distinguished himself in Anne E. Adams case
Sedita’s forceful handling of case limits damage to system’s credibility

This was one case where the Good Ol’ Boys Club, or its modern more gender-conscious equivalent, did not prevail. A local Supreme Court justice has resigned in disgrace. An attorney has been fired from her part-time job at the University at Buffalo Law School, pleaded guilty to three crimes and faces the loss of her law license.

And Erie County’s new District Attorney, Frank A. Sedita III, has distinguished himself by acting forcefully to rebuke two lawyers whose actions threatened to damage the ability of the local court system to dispence justice creditably.

The sordid story begins Sept. 2, when Anne E. Adams, an attorney, former prosecutor and until Saturday director of the trial technique program at UB Law, was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated.

As charged by Sedita, and as admitted in court Friday, Adams then launched into a scheme to frustrate the wheels of justice. It was a scheme actively assisted by Joseph G. Makowski who was, until he resigned Friday, a local State Supreme Court justice.

Adams, apparently desperate to beat the rap, filed a false affidavit attesting to the accuracy of a phony blood test, one intended to challenge police evidence that she was intoxicated while weaving down Route 5. And she persuaded her personal physician to do the same.

That scheme amounted to filing a false statement and attempted tampering with evidence. She pleaded guilty to both, plus the drunken driving charge, all three misdemeanors, last week. Sentencing, which could be as much as two years in jail, is set for late April.

Makowski, meanwhile, was accused of filing a false affidavit of his own. In it, he claimed that while he and Adams were together in the parking lot of a local restaurant (they were) that she appeared sober and able to operate a motor vehicle (she wasn’t).

His deal with Sedita allowed Makowski to avoid facing any criminal charges of his own, but demanded an immediate resignation from the bench.

Deliberate attempts to mislead the criminal justice system happen every day. If they didn’t, we’d never need trials or juries or expert witnesses. But when those attempts, so blatant and deliberate, are made by officers of the court, more than the outcome of one case is at risk.

As Sedita rightly pointed out, one of the things that he, as district attorney, must strive to protect is public confidence in the criminal justice system. Widespread knowledge, or even suspicion, that the system can be manipulated by those in the know, or by those taking advantage of who they know, seriously damages the credibility the system must have if it is to sift truth from falsehood, establish guilt, proclaim innocence and mete out the proper consequences.

This community is still reeling from recent reports of innocent people—people without wealth or influence— spending years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Allowing other sorts of people to play the system to escape punishment for crimes they did commit would only compound the mistrust many times over.


http://www.buffalonews.com/149/story/590649.html

[samanthajane13]

Sentencing judge chosen in former prosecutor Adams' DWI case
By Matt Gryta
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Former attorney Anne E. Adams will be sentenced for drunken driving by acting State Supreme Court Justice Michael F. Griffith of Warsaw. State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch Sr. said he expects Griffith to sentence Adams in Buffalo, quite possibly on her scheduled court date of April 23.

James P. Harrington, Adams’ attorney, said he has been notified the sentencing has been assigned to Griffith because Erie County Judge Sheila A. DiTullio, who took the former lawyer’s guilty plea Feb. 20, had recused herself because both women were once Erie County prosecutors.

Kloch said he transferred the case to Griffith after consultations with State Supreme Court Justice Sharon S. Townsend, administrative judge of the state’s Buffalo-based eight-county 8th Judicial District.

Kloch also said his “deep respect” for Griffith as a fellow judge and a longtime friend played a role in his selection. Harrington said DiTullio felt uneasy sentencing an ex-prosecutor, but he said he felt DiTullio would still have imposed a fair sentence.

On Feb. 20, Adams, 46, a frequent Republican judicial hopeful who now lives in Angola, pleaded guilty before DiTullio to three misdemeanors for drunken driving and her role in trying to fix her DWI case.

In addition to a misdemeanor drunken driving charge, Adams pleaded guilty to offering a false instrument for filing and attempted tampering with physical evidence linked to her arrest in the Town of Hamburg on Sept. 2.

On March 6, the state’s Rochester-based Appellate Division of State Supreme Court struck Adams from the state’s roll of attorneys, and she was stripped of her longtime supervisory job at the University at Buffalo Law School because of the plea.

State Supreme Court Justice Joseph G. Makowski, 55, who was with Adams last Sept. 2 before she was arrested, resigned from the bench effective March 6. He had filed an affidavit on behalf of Adams as she was attempting to quash her DWI case.

Adams, who is free pending her sentencing, faces a sentence ranging from probation and possible weekends in jail to up to two years of local jail time.

She was arrested on Route 5 in the Town of Hamburg after a Hamburg police officer saw her Ford Thunderbird convertible weaving from lane to lane. Police said her blood-alcohol content at the time was 0.19 percent — more than twice the legal limit.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said he had been apprised by court officials of the change of sentencing judges without any detailed explanations “legally or factually.”

Sedita said DiTullio sent him a letter recently announcing her recusal based on what he said was “information that came to her attention” after she took the plea. Sedita said DiTullio did not disclose to him what that information entailed and was unavailable to comment.


http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregio...329.html?imw=Y

[samanthajane13]

Ex-lawyer Adams jailed briefly in DWI coverup
Head bowed in disgrace, Adams faces rare penalty in unusual case
By Gene Warner and Matt Gryta
NEWS STAFF REPORTERS

Anne E. Adams emerged as a shamed figure in a basement courtroom downtown Thursday morning.

The former prosecutor and later defense attorney stood tall at her own sentencing, but with her head bowed for virtually the entire 23 minutes, choosing to speak only in monosyllables.

Then she was led away in handcuffs to spend 15 days in the county jail, her punishment for trying to cover up her drunken-driving arrest last September.

But Adams’ unusual case took another strange twist Thursday afternoon, when a senior state appellate judge granted her a stay of sentencing, giving her attorney 120 days to appeal the sentence.

She left the back entrance of the Erie County Holding Center shortly before 4 p. m., joined by three friends and relatives who tried to shield her from being photographed.

“I’ve never encountered a case quite like this,” Adams’ attorney, James P. Harrington, said earlier in court, referring to his almost 40 years as a criminal defense attorney. “I’m not sure if it’s more of a Greek tragedy, a Shakespearean play or a John Grisham novel.”

Whether Adams serves a day in jail won’t be known for months, but the sight of her being led away in handcuffs showed how far she had fallen, from her roles as a longtime Erie County assistant district attorney, popular University at Buffalo Law School figure, mentor to many young female attorneys and a possible judicial candidate as recently as last summer.

In the last few months, Adams lost her license to practice law in New York State and was fired from her part-time supervisory job at UB Law School.

Then she went to jail, if only for six hours.

“She’s humiliated. She’s disgraced,” Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said after the sentencing. “She no longer can be a lawyer. . . . She lost her job at the university. She’s publicly humiliated. And on top of that, she’s going to jail. I think that sends a strong message.”

A few hours later, Senior Appellate Justice Samuel L. Green granted Adams, 46, the stay of sentence, after a half-hour session in his Buffalo chambers.

Green acted on the challenge by Harrington, who called the 15-day sentence unduly harsh and questioned the legality of the multilevel sentencing imposed Thursday morning.

Sedita wasn’t pleased with the release, emphasizing that his office “adamantly opposed” the stay of sentence.

“In our opinion, she has no legitimate appealable issue,” Sedita said. “She pleaded guilty, and as a condition of her plea, she waived her rights to an appeal.”

Harrington disagreed.

“We would argue there is a sentencing issue that’s not covered by the waiver of appeal,” Harrington said without elaborating.

Earlier in the day, after saying he was moved by many letters of support for Adams, acting State Supreme Court Justice Michael F. Griffith quoted the former attorney’s own words before sentencing her.

“Judge, I hatched a selfish and reprehensible scheme subverting everything I hold sacred in the law,” she stated in her letter. “My actions were inexcusable.”

“I think that says it all,” the judge said.

Griffith, in his sentencing remarks, addressed both those who might think the sentence was too soft and those who would consider it too harsh.

“The public, lawyers included, need to be aware that if they subvert the laws of the state, like you did, there has to be punishment,” Griffith said, addressing Adams. “As much as I feel for your situation, I can’t get away from that.”

Besides the 15 days, Griffith sentenced Adams to three years’ probation, continued mental health treatment, 100 hours of community service, continued drug and alcohol testing, and attendance at a DWI Impact Panel.

Griffith, a Wyoming County Court judge assigned to the case in March, also included two unusual measures in his multiple sentencing provisions, ordering Adams to write two “sincere letters of apology,” both within the next 20 days.

One must be sent to the Town of Hamburg officers who originally arrested her, for comments she made about them that were “totally a lie,” the judge said.

The other letter must be sent to the county bar association’s newspaper, Bulletin, so the legal community can see “what got you to this stage.”

Other lawyers said they could not remember such letters being ordered as part of other sentencing provisions.

Adams had pleaded guilty in February to three misdemeanors: driving while intoxicated, offering a false statement for filing and attempted tampering with physical evidence linked to her DWI arrest in the Town of Hamburg on Sept. 2.

She is not the only professional who has been disgraced by her actions.

After her DWI charge, based on a 0.19 percent blood-alcohol level, Adams had tried to avoid prosecution by getting a falsified blood-alcohol test and a statement from a judge that she was not intoxicated at the time.

In an attempt to convince authorities that she wasn’t drunk that evening, Adams persuaded Dr. Tarik Elibol, her primary- care physician in Kenmore, to draw a sample of her blood the next day. She also asked him to falsely specify on the tube that the blood was drawn at 10 p. m. the previous day, just hours after her arrest, according to court records.

Sedita chose not to prosecute Elibol because “he came clean and came clean early,” the district attorney said.

In February, State Supreme Court Justice Joseph G. Makowski resigned in disgrace while facing a state judicial investigation and a potential grand jury investigation of statements he made in an affidavit in the Adams case.

Makowski, in that Sept. 11 affidavit, repeatedly stated that nothing in Adams’ behavior suggested that she could not drive home safely from a downtown Buffalo restaurant on the night she was arrested.

In the courtroom Thursday morning, prosecutor Bethany A. Solek, who studied under Adams at UB Law School, told Griffith that Adams had made the choice to drive in a “highly intoxicated” condition on a busy road before manipulating others to subvert justice.

“Ms. Adams solicited others, including a physician and a judge, to make false statements,” Solek said.

Harrington then told the court that Adams does not minimize those actions or blame anyone else.

“She’s profoundly ashamed, and rightfully so,” he added.

But Harrington also cited the emotional and psychological toll on Adams, to the point that a person who has made her living as a wordsmith wasn’t able to speak to the court.

“Her depression and decompensation are such that she finds it almost unbearable to face people who love her,” the defense attorney said.

Adams, an Angola resident who was dressed in a black suit and white open-collar blouse, even had trouble facing the judge.

Before sentencing, Griffith asked Adams whether she wanted to comment.

“No,” she replied, as she continued gazing at the floor.

That wasn’t the only monosyllabic answer.

After the sentencing, when Harrington asked for a one-day delay on Adams’ jailing, the judge sternly said, “No.”

Uniformed court officials handcuffed her and took her from the courtroom at 10:01 a. m., before a higher judge’s stay opened the jail doors for her about six hours later.


http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/649818.html