The Patriots are disappointed that Gallagher has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and is forced to resign on April 18th. Although we are saddened by the decision, we respect Gallagher’s choice to take the plea and we hope that his supporters refrain from casting aspersions against the former council member. No one can fully understand the tremendous emotional, physical and financial burden this has caused Gallagher and his family. Its easy to yell from the sidelines and condemn Gallagher for not continuing the fight for an acquittal and public vindication because of the reported overwhelming evidence and facts that support his innocence, yet let us remember that it is not so easy to roll the dice on the “trial by jury” crap table. Remember OJ?
Although the parameters of the plea agreement are clear and concise, the questions it raises leaves room for endless speculation.
The ten count indictment (that was ultimately thrown because of prosecutorial misconduct) contained a list of serious felonious charges but surprisingly the only plea bargains offered by the DA are misdemeanors. Are plea bargains a clear indication of what prosecutors feel they can prove in court? Some sources say yes.
According to reports, the alleged victim states she was not consulted regarding the plea bargain and stated publicly she was against the agreement. Were prosecutors concerned that the complainant was not a credible witness and her participation in any negotiations would hinder a conviction?
The plea bargain agreement was a swift and tidy way to end a very sticky and murky criminal case. Was this a way for the DA’s office to close this case without further embarrassment and prevent details of the investigation from becoming public?
There are only two people who know what really happened the night of July 8th and a handful of individuals involved in the subsequent investigation of the incident. Hopefully, the rest of us will find out “the truth” as information become available in the near future. Although a true vindication would have come from a not guilty decision by either a judge or jury an acquittal in the court of public opinion could be just as sweet.
16 comments:
I feel terribly for all concerned, but, quite frankly, I am the most concerned for the entire community of Middle Village, Maspeth and Glendale.
Look, any reasonable person can see that there is more than enough blame to go around to both the alleged victim (a drunk, married woman who left a bar on a Sunday afternoon with an alleged stranger and supposedly was not romantically leading him on in any way) and the alleged rapist (a dirty little person who made the most stupid decision in his life, although I would not want to test this statement). But there is no question that the commuity was hurt most by this entire affair, what preceeded it and what has come out from it.
The community is continuously being hurt by the constant fighting between the members of the community who call themselves civic leaders and patriots.
These people, rather than working together to find common ground to benefit our community, can do nothing more that fight incessantly, quibble over minutia, and play with themselves day in and day out. All they do is monitor each other's blogs, respond with caustic diatribes, and achieve nothing in the process. The "battles" that take place are fiction and in the minds of the combatants. The energy wasted in the process, though, is sapping the lifeblood from our communities.
"While I was intoxicated I intentionally and forcibly touched intimate parts of the complainant and subjected her to sexual contact without her consent.
My conduct was wrong and I apologize to the complainant."
-Those are Pinky's exact words.
He insisted he was innocent and it was consensual just 6 months ago.
The law is the law. If you plead guilty, your guilty. Innocent people fight for their freedom.
I truly feel for his wife and kids. Not for him. Can you imagine the kind of humiliation he has caused his sons with this matter?
Hopefully, now, we can get a fresh start. Pinky is over, St. Saviour is over, lets move on as a community.
Tie score: Gallagher 0, Holden 0.
The last posting is typical of the type that has been rampant for more than a year and which is not going to move anything forward in our troubled communities of Middle Village, Maspeth and Glendale. There is a call to stop the negativism and the writer purports to want precisely that by concluding the writer's blog in apparent agreement with the concept.
The writer, however, is obviously not truly interested in the concept. Instead, the writer is too transparent and has revealed he/she is a steadfast anti-Gallagher purported civic leader who has probably written the word Pinky more than a thousand times. After doing so once again and quoting Gallagher's words that were no doubt coerced by the realities of his situation, the writer then pulls into a crap bag to raise up St. Saviour just prior to demanding to "move on as a community." This sort of bait and switch editorializing and yellow-journalism will fatally prevent any positive developments in our communities. It's time to look at the big picture and realize that our communities need better representation. It is not going to come from people who act anything like the writer of the prior crap.
If you plead guilty, your guilty. Innocent people fight for their freedom
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As painful as those words may be in applying them, they are an absolute truth. I understand that maybe he took his plea due to extenuating circumstances, but he took it nonetheless and now he is convicted. Period. Many people stood up for him, were ridiculed for it and stuck by him regardless. He took a plea. He has forfeited his right to expect any vindication or acquittal in the court of public opinion. He and his family have my prayers, he no longer has my sympathy.
Hey anon,
Faced with a half million dollar legal bill and months of embarrassment for your family, how "guilty" would you become in order to save your family from that. Innocence is not as black and white as you would like to believe. Do you really feel the DA, with the scrutiny they're under on this case, would give him this veritable slap on the wrist if they really believed they had much of a case?
That said, I agree with the earlier poster. This community has to begin to work together. Otherwise you'll tear yourselves apart.
Good luck.
I am not siding with Gallagher, or defending him. He's history -- thank God. The negatism obviously is not. Too bad for us all.
Until we get new leadership in the JPCA the negatism will not stop. They feel persecuted when they are the persecutors.
Members of the JPCA need to wake up and realize that not every word that drops out of there leaders mouths is the truth.
My original comments about Pinky's comments were purely my own. I dont even belong to the JPCA. I dont even know them. You need to stop assuming that because someone has a negative view of Gallagher, they are somehow linked with JPCA. There are alot of us regular hard working folks out there who simply believe he is a scumbag, plain and simple. You are not going to change my mind on that. A man who drinks like a fish, cheats on his wife, emnabrasses his kids and forces himself upon a woman who is also drunk is not only a fool, he needs to visit the local mental health clinic. We dont JPCA to tell us that. In terms of neagtivism, this blog has made it an art form.
Disclaiming membership in the JPCA and criticising this blog as being negative is not constructive. The core of the discussion that I wanted to start and would like to continue with you (and anyone else who really cares about our communities) is how we can band together, form a more "perfect union", as our founding fathers would say, to join our voices to gain more goods and services for our communities. We all watch in awe as to how other communities can obtain huge amounts of federal and state dollars to make fantastic improvements. Our communities, though, can't get past narrow-minded, half-cocked ideas to get into other peoples' pockets, causing us all to suffer because our leaders are either on one side or the other of such issues and have nothing more that they can do but defend themselves against ad hominem attacks. Whether a leader is elected, or not, it seems to me that we must push for what we are entitled to get by being tolerant of personal differences for the good of the communities. Leave the prosecution of criminals to the district attorney. Do you want to join in the effort to get the communities improved? Then stop criticising for the sake of criticising. I vote to band our electorate together to vote against any politician or any civic leader who does not vie to get for us what we are due as a community.
It is truly the height of hypocrisy for you to say "stop criticising for the sake of criticising" and "being tolerant of personal differences for the good of the communities." when you just spent an article asking for the resignation of Governor Patterson for his infidelities. Why wont you hold Mr. Gallagher to the same standard? This remains the problem. You have big blowhards on one side (patriots) and even bigger ones on the other side (Queens Crap). We the decent people of the community are in the middle and get screwed in the process. Stop faking, if you were so concerned about bring people together, you wouldnt be doing this blog, nor would the people at Queens crap. Come into the community talk to your neighbors face to face, work together and stop the cowardly blogging bullshit.
It's a shame. I am not a person in any way affiliated with either the crap, JPCA or Juniper Park Patriots. Dialogue with you is over.
I'm a firm believer that for most people morality and moral applications are based on the respective politicians political affiliation....you won't see too many Democrats defending Republicans or Republicans defending Democrats....
Mr. Mojon Risin..
Funny how he wanted us to believe that the victim was down with having sex with him. Then he admits that he touched her intimate parts w. out her ok.
btw, that was some sincere apology he gave the "complaintant" in court, with his back to her, and barely audible to those just 10 feet away from the red-faced, sweaty man.
Hey Morons! Told ya so! Friggin idiots! Blasting crappy and jpca and everyone else who goes after him. Now you look more stupid than you normally do.
Here's a napkin, wipe the egg off your faces.
I know the "victim" and she is unreliable, and prone to hyperbole. In fact she can't get any story straight, and I strongly believe Gallagher is the victim here.
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