NEW YORK
New York Daily News
The race for Brooklyn district attorney pits a 24-year incumbent finishing a deeply troubled sixth term against a lawyer who has never faced a challenge remotely on the scale of leading New York’s largest prosecution office.
Charles Hynes, 78, is running for a seventh term on a record that includes findings by two federal judges of grievous misconduct by a top aide, an investigation into whether dozens of cases produced wrongful convictions and credible charges of having failed to effectively act on sexual abuse in the politically powerful ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
Hynes’ challenger is Kenneth Thompson. Harlem-born and raised by a single mother who served as an NYPD cop, Thompson, 48, has a legal career that encompasses only five years as a Brooklyn federal prosecutor, three years as a Manhattan law firm associate and 10 years running his own small firm — plus the use of divisive rhetoric in his biggest case. …
Further undermining confidence in the quality of justice, Hynes acknowledged an almost two-decade failure to prosecute sexual abuse in the insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. He has since become more effective but he shields the names of defendants, asserting that the unique abandonment of public disclosure prevents reprisals against accusers.
The double standard leaped to the fore when, at a press conference, Hynes identified four black men as having subjected an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman to nine years of sexual servitude. Later, Hynes dismissed the indictments because a top aide had concealed that the accuser had recanted her claims.
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