The Putnam County District Attorney’s Office’s case against a defense attorney just took a turn for the sexy.
District Attorney Adam Levy has been prosecuting defense attorney, George Galgano, on charges he allegedly bribed a witness to not testify against his client. And now there are allegations the DA’s office pulled out all of the stops to get their guy.
One of the government’s key witnesses against Galgano is convicted felon Quincy McQuaid. According to recent court filings, he and his girlfriend Lia LoRusso testified in exchange for a conjugal visit in the conference room of the District Attorney’s Office. It’s a romantic encounter McQuaid is said to have written about in his letters to LoRusso. As the Journal News reports:
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The letter from McQuaid is one in a series recently turned over by prosecutors to Galgano’s lawyers that suggest McQuaid, who has felony robbery, weapon and drug convictions, requested a tryst through his lawyer and was accommodated in exchange for his cooperation against Galgano. LoRusso had a felony robbery conviction of her own, but it’s unclear whether she was in custody at the time of the conference-room encounter.
The DA’s office has taken to flatly denying the allegations, and using some pretty evocative language to do so:
The district attorney’s spokeswoman, Michelle Verna, when asked about the sex allegations, initially said only, “Your inquiry implies that an inmate who was in custody of either the PCSO (Putnam County sheriff’s office) or Carmel PD was left unaccompanied or unattended. I suggest you reach out to them for comment.”
She later said, “Any allegation that a defendant would be able to engage in sexual contact, while in handcuffs and leg shackles, and under the constant supervision of law enforcement, is frankly ridiculous. Even Houdini would be impressed.”
Though the DA’s office pawned the blame off on the sheriff’s office, this quickly devolved into a game of “not it”:
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Sheriff’s Capt. William McNamara said neither McQuaid nor LoRusso were in his department’s custody that day. The court order giving Carmel police and [district attorney’s Investigator Henry] Lopez custody of McQuaid was clear, he said.
“If the alleged conduct involving Mr. McQuaid did, in fact, happen while he was in the custody of the District Attorney’s Office, and while he was inside its conference room as alleged, then it is the district attorney who should answer about such an egregious failure to exercise proper custody over him as ordered by the court,” McNamara said. “For anyone to suggest that someone other than the District Attorney’s Office is responsible for what allegedly goes on involving a person in its custody, in its own conference room, is nonsense.”
This tangled web doesn’t get any clearer when the parties involved in love’s passionate embrace start talking. When LoRusso called Galgano to talk to him about a separate legal matter he confronted her about McQuaid’s letters and asked if the alone time was in exchange for testimony. And, of course since LoRusso was calling from jail, the conversation was recorded — in the soap opera that is this case nothing less would make any sense:
LoRusso, who sounded surprised that Galgano had the letters, responded, “All they did was they allowed us to go there. They gave us coffee and doughnuts and let us sit there, and there was no sex. I don’t know why either one of us would have written that because that didn’t happen. It was just we got to spend 15 minutes together..You know, we got to hold hands, that kind of thing.”
Glad that cleared it all up. Except it didn’t. The judge hasn’t ruled on any of these allegations as yet, but there is a predictable amount of hand wringing and calls for investigations if there is truth to the allegations. Until then, we’ll just be left to wonder if it all went down in a manner similar to Lorna Morello’s wedding on Orange Is The New Black.
Prisoner was allowed sex at D.A.’s office, filing says [The Journal News]