Retired Judge John Leventhal had been elevated to the Appellate Division - Second Department in 2008 when, a few year...
Retired Judge John Leventhal had been elevated to the Appellate Division - Second Department in 2008 when, a few years later - while on that Court - a 1995 case in which he was trial judge was reversed by the Federal District Court, overruling a 2006 Second Department affirmance of resentencing. A few weeks later Leventhal released an alleged serial child molester on appeal bail on the purported strength of an audio recording showing the molester had been supposedly the target of an extortion scheme by his victim; said audio recording (and theory) the DA's office later held was “ambiguous at best” - inter alia, did not justify the extraordinary grant of the child molester's appeal bail(thus demonstrating that Leventhal’s granting was appeal bail was flawed [to put in nicely]). Apparently, this enabled - where the Second Circuit later reversed the District Court in the 1995 case’s resentencing appeal - Judge Leventhal to save face (as a junior Appellate judge) with his Second Department colleagues. To repay the favor, he again helped the molester's lawyer, when an appellate penal with Leventhal as justice presiding, reversed a homicide case on an error that lawyer (who was the homicide defendant's trial counsel) may well have concocted with the trial judge and, in any event, failed to preserve (the appellate lawyer for that case didn't even argue trial lawyer's ineffectiveness for not preserving the obvious error - imagine that). A few months later Leventhal joined that lawyer's law firm. Doesn’t seem very Your Honor(able), does it?