Criminal Defense Lawyer: Eric N. Vitaliano: the "N" stands for "NIMBY". When there was an…
Eric N. Vitaliano: the "N" stands for "NIMBY". When there was an opening in the Eastern District, Senator Schumer couldn't find a crackpot conservative he could stomach that he could recommend to President Bush, so this guy was the compromise choice. You're fishing in shallow waters with this guy. Doesn't read many of the orders ghost-written by his law clerk; he just signs and enters them on blind faith. Slovenly work ethic. Some judges read every word carefully in the briefs. Not this guy. Maybe it's because he's cock-eyed. He's got one eye on the page in front of him and another eye on the door, wishing he could go home. What else he looks at is anyone's guess, but it certainly isn't the work in front of him. He does know what kind of results he wants in a case, and he lets you know it in the papers he writes. When he was Assmeblyman, he was a pro-death penalty, anti-landfill secessionist on SI. That's all he thought about. I guess he was afraid the state would bury convicts in the SI landfill after executing them - probably in his backyard. Their ghosts would be wandering through his house at night, waking him and Helen. The quality of the federal bench is generally superb. Many judges there are the best of the best. These judge belong there; they understand each case thoroughly and they work hard to do the right thing. They were put there for their skills and reasoned temperaments. Then you have judges who are appointed to fulfill an ideological agenda. They're not there to be judges, but to maintain a school of thought - "values", those knee-jerk reactionaries call it - which are not values at all but a maintenance of resistance to basic constitutional safeguards they view as "radical" or "coddling criminals". We have judges a dime a dozen like that in the local courts. When politics gets involved, you get people like Vitaliano in a black robe. Sadly, they stay there until the Grim Reaper decommissions them