Is the Head of the IMF a Sex Criminal?

Her lawyer claims there was medical evidence of vaginal bruising and a torn ligament, among other injuries.

Too bad for them that they did not work faster for a settlement before the case disappear on them

Some day soon — today, perhaps? — an observant bookie might ask: Who faces longer election odds? Dominique Strauss-Kahn or the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.?

The new district attorney’s string of losses and/or embarrassments in high-profile cases has become perversely impressive. In recent weeks, the Deutsche Bank contractors both walked free and the East Village police officers accused of rape were found not guilty of the most serious charges against them. And a grand jury refused to allow Mr. Vance to pursue his most serious charges against two men accused of conspiring to blow up a Manhattan synagogue.

Now the the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, seems about to spin free of career-ending felony charges.

Mr. Vance’s office filed a letter on Friday with State Supreme Court that reads like the legal equivalent of a skin-scrape, peeling back near every aspect of their witness’s credibility. She lied about the torture and death of her husband at the hands of government troops in her native Guinea and she lied about her claims to having been gang-raped.

The sorry list grows longer. She lied about the details of the day of her sexual encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. And law enforcement investigators told The New York Times that she has a bank account plump with the proceeds from a jailed drug dealer, who discussed with her the economic advantages of pursuing charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

The mystery attendant to Friday’s proceeding is why Mr. Vance’s office declined to drop the case entirely.

None of this should suggest that Mr. Strauss-Kahn emerges with anything but the shards of his old reputation. The housekeeper’s accusation against him was like tugging on an old cupboard door — when it flew open, old allegations of his contemptible behavior toward women came spilling out.

A few, unfortunately hailing mostly from my sex, claim to see vindication in this messy disaster. So we have this French fellow quoted in our article on the reaction in France: “This is a slap in the face of the feminists,” said Marc Marciano, 53, a trader in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb.

Mr. Marciano might find so much comfort in silence. As for Mr. Strauss-Kahn and his future, when the debate is between those who accuse you of rape and those who defend you as a mere disgusting cad, your image problems have not emerged from critical care.

All of which brings us back to Mr. Vance and the spectacular botch that his office has made of this case. There is no argument, moral or legal, to be made for special treatment. But if a local prosecutor decides that justice demands bringing to ground the International Monetary Fund’s managing director and a potential French presidential front-runner, he might want to nail down each detail before slapping on the cuffs.

The former I.M.F. chief is a man who travels back and forth across the Atlantic as easily as most of us cross Broadway. Why not build a case and arrest him the next time he steps into Nobu? Those who argue against prosecutorial patience point to the case of Roman Polanski, who engaged in scurrilously bad, not to mention felonious, behavior in the United States, and then picked up his film career within the shadow of the Alps.

But Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s life ambitions argue against the notion that he could have barricaded himself inside his Paris duplex, lived on takeout foie gras for a few months, and resumed his candidacy for president. He faced two choices: Restore his honor by facing the charges, or retire into disgrace.

This of course is second-guessing (my value added!). What’s clear now is that the highest profile case of Mr. Vance’s still-young career appears to have collapsed in upon itself. His office’s letter to the judges ends with the acknowledgement that the witness lied about her history, background, present circumstances and personal relationship.

It concludes: “Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.”

Where do we begin?

It’s a classic reversal of fortune.

The severe weakening of the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn has potentially restored the political hopes of the French presidential contender. But it has dealt a setback to the nascent career and political ambitions of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

Vance has served for less than two years in one of the highest-profile positions in U.S. law enforcement. He is the son of Cyrus R. Vance Sr., a Democratic lion and secretary of state under Jimmy Carter, and is the hand-picked successor of Robert Morgenthau, the legendary nine-term Manhattan district attorney.

But Friday, his office’s acknowledgment that it now questions the credibility of the chambermaid who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape led to the Frenchman’s release from house arrest on his own recognizance.

The development caps a string of high-profile defeats for Vance.

“Major cases keep falling apart or acquittals occur where the public is hyped about the nature of the crime and the probability of conviction,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who has worked on several district attorney races but not on the 2009 election. “If Vance continues to lose cases where the electorate has an intense amount of information, he is going to have a problem. There are definitely people today thinking about whether Cy Vance should be challenged.”

At first, the Strauss-Kahn prosecution seemed an ideal opportunity for Vance to make a name for himself.

After filing the indictment, he spoke to reporters on the courthouse steps, characterizing the charges against Strauss-Kahn as “extremely serious” with evidence that “supports the commission of non-consensual forced sexual acts.”

This week, however, the most serious problems emerged with his own case. And for Vance, who took the district attorney’s office in a sharply contested election, this is not an isolated incident.

Detractors of Vance cite an exodus of experienced lawyers and growing tensions with Morgenthau as proof of his poor management skills. They point to a recent spate of courtroom losses as evidence of his tendency to overreach.

In May, a jury acquitted two police officers of rape charges made by Vance’s office in the officer’s handling of a drunken woman whom they helped into her apartment. The sensational nature of the case resulted in blanket tabloid coverage, as did the unexpected verdict. The officers were acquitted on all but official misconduct charges.

In June, Vance argued that two men accused of plotting to blow up the largest synagogue in Manhattan had a “desire to commit violent jihad against Jewish Americans” and called it “not only an act of terrorism, but a hate crime.” His office failed to persuade a grand jury that the men intended to kill worshiping Jews, a hate crime that would have carried mandatory life sentences. Instead, it settled for felony charges that carry a maximum of 25 years in prison.

On June 24, an Egyptian businessman pleaded down charges linked to his groping of a chambermaid in the Pierre hotel. He received a $250 fine and five days of community service.

Earlier this week, jurors acquitted two supervisors charged with negligently watching over construction of the former Deutsche Bank building in downtown Manhattan, leading to a 2007 fire that killed two firefighters. And two days before the Strauss-Kahn case faltered, the longtime chief of the Manhattan district attorney’s sex crimes unit, Lisa Friel, abruptly quit.

All those matters pale in comparison with the Strauss-Kahn case, in which Vance’s legal critics fault him with a rush to judgment. While New York law demands that prosecutors seek an indictment for such a crime in five or six days, Strauss-Kahn altered the legal calculus when he posted bail before the indictment.


Vance declined to comment for this report, but his spokeswoman, Erin Duggan, said there was no rush. “This is how the criminal justice system works,” she said. She also objected to the notion that her boss was on a losing streak, saying that “a lot of homicides and sexual assaults never get a blip in the media.”

“We are not a baseball team. We don’t measure the work of the office on wins and losses, but on doing the right thing in every case,” she said, citing recent arrests in child pornography and drug dealing cases.

Other defenders of Vance’s tactics came from unlikely quarters.

“It’s not fair to rush to judgments about him because he is taking over after a 30-plus- year reign,” said Leslie Crocker Snyder, a former New York judge who ran against Vance and had unsuccessfully sought to unseat Morgenthau several times.

Crocker Snyder said the instinct to “indict quickly” was “natural” given the high profile and serious nature of the alleged crime. But she said Vance was “fortunate” that Strauss-Kahn was “able to get out on bail, as high as it was. It could have been a much worse situation if he had been in jail like many people would have been.”

Vance grew up in New York and Washington and earned his law degree from Georgetown University in 1982. His father served in the high government positions under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson before being named secretary of state under President Carter.

In seeking the district attorney’s job in 2009, Vance explained that he had not wanted to pursue his father’s path, and sought to make his own way. He spent 16 years as a defense attorney in Seattle, suffering some other high-profile defeats, including one to the case of teacher Mary Kay Letourneau. His defense of Joseph Meling, accused of sending cyanide-laced Sudafed capsules to kill his wife, ended in a conviction, as did the case of a businessman who strangled his Russian mail-order bride.

Vance returned to New York in 2004 as rumors spread that Morgenthau, then well into his 80s, was contemplating retirement. Five years later, when Morgenthau left office, he passed over likely heirs in the office to pick Vance, whom he thought would hold up his legacy. It hasn’t worked out that way; associates of the former district attorney have privately expressed he is increasingly displeased with the performance of his successor.

However he had never been convicted of any misdeed

No, more accurately, he hasn't been convicted of any misdeed...yet.

They made a justifible arrest based on a complaint that appeared credible and was backed by forensic evidence.

And whether or not a criminal sexual assault took place in that hotel suite is still unknown.

What was the forensic evidence at the time of the arrest? And the complaint might only have appeared credible to those wishing it to.

A trial would be the only way to ferret out the truth.

The New York police got taken in by a third world con-woman.

Hawkeye I wonder if Firefly would like to tell us once more how wonderful the sex crime unit is in New York?

Is this the most expensive blow job in history?

Aside from your general position that it is a very serious felony to get sexual privileges from a woman without paying the appropriate price.

Lisa Friel, got fired by Vance and her replacement, assistant District Attorney Martha Bashford, named new head

The firing of Lisa Friel, Manhattan Sex Crimes unit, was inevitable, NY state law requires that the footage should have been shared with defence attorneys even though it was not aired. Friel and her team failed to do this.

Other Manhattan Sex Crime unit prosecutors and investigators involved in the HBO documentary are either under investigation or have been reprimanded by DA Vance. Two prosecution witnesses, its Chief District Attorney investigator Ed Tacchi and District Attorney investigator Lauren Liebhauser, talked about the case on camera.
http://solariasun.com/5082/lisa-friel-manhattan-sex-crimes/

"There is information . . . of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it's not for bringing extra f--king towels," a source close to the defense investigation said yesterday.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/maid_cleaning_up_as_hooker_0mMd759PLuYGYYJyA0RNbI#ixzz1QyaEJQHG

"There is information . . . of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it's not for bringing extra f--king towels," a source close to the defense investigation said yesterday

Perhaps you should read the papers before continuing to make a total fool of yourself by posting your individual fantasies?

Sources also told The Post Strauss-Kahn's probers uncovered evidence that...

Another gold mine I am sure is looking into how she got this $60K a year job with extensive opportunities for good tips.

How is that related to the matter of whether DSK criminally sexually assaulted her in his hotel suite?

Shall we also examine all of the skeletons in DSK's closet--and look into just how he got all of his past jobs