NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 13, 2015

TRENTON —Federal prosecutors in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial of a Lakewood rabbi on Monday dismissed one of the charges in a case alleging the religious leader arranged for Orthodox Jewish husbands to be held and tortured until they gave their wives religious divorces.

The announcement came hours before federal prosecutors were set to deliver closing arguments in a two-month long trial in which the government claims three rabbis and the son of one of them distorted Jewish law for their financial gain.

The dismissal of the single charge still leaves jurors to consider four other counts in the indictment against Rabbi Mendel Epstein, his son David “Ari” Epstein, and rabbis Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler.

The government dismissed the charge pertaining to Usher Chaimowitz, a Brooklyn man whose roommate testified they…