Ordinarily we get all our news from that little screen above the elevator buttons that calls itself Captivate Network. But even we’ve noticed that for weeks the tabloids have been full of the story of a Bronx Assistant District Attorney charged with drunk driving and suspected of finessing two earlier DWI arrests.
Her arrest photo even shared front-page billing with the Royal Wedding. But now that the happy pair has returned to opening charity bazaars and inspecting battleships, Miz Only-a-couple-of-beers has recaptured the headlines with news of the draconian punishment meted out to her by the Bronx DA’s Office: she’s been transferred to the Appeals Bureau.
“It’s where they hide the problem DA’s,” a source told the NY Daily News (“Bronx prosecutor Jennifer Troiano demoted after DWI Charge,” Daily News 5/7/11). “It is a rubber room of sorts. They go there and no one hears from them again.”
The DA’s Office “knew she was a party girl and they kept protecting her,” the source added.
That explains why People’s briefs are so awful we can barely bring ourselves to open them until on the subway going to oral argument.
Sycophantic (“as Justice Blow so brilliantly held”), jejune (“the paid defense expert”), self-righteous (“defendant’s depraved failure to complete a drug program”), fact-fiddling and illiterate, they seemed to be churned out by malevolent robots with a macro key.
But now that we know that their Appeals Bureau is staffed by party girls and problem prosecutors, we have to admit it sounds like a pretty cool scene:
Scene: The Rubber Room of the Bronx DA’s Office. Twenty or thirty scantily clad party girls dancing around drinking out of champagne bottles and twining themselves around problem prosecutors.
Problem prosecutor #1: For crissake, Bubbles, leave me alone willya? I’m busy sewing together these human skins.
Problem prosecutor #2: I am Napoleon.
Party girl #1: You hush your bazoo and finish that habeas, Napoleon, or no champers for you.
Problem prosecutor #3: (huddled in a corner, mumbling to himself ) Maybe that statement is Brady material that should be turned over to the defense.
Nurse Ratchett: (brandishing a hypodermic) What did you say? WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Problem prosecutor #3: Nothing! Nothing at all!
Party girl #2: Ooooh, here’s some disclosure, baby.
The Daily News article was followed by an indignant letter from the Bronx DA – who’s married to an Appellate Division judge – denying that the Appeals Bureau is a rubber room and claiming that appellate work is “at least as demanding” as throwing people in jail (“DA cries foul” Daily News, 5/11/11).
What a party pooper.
Do problem appellate attorneys get sent to the trial offices? If CAB’s are rubber rooms, then I guess trial offices are lion cages. Both will kill you – one slowly and the other rather quickly, depending on whether the lion has recently consumed.
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