Judge stands by decision to go to bat for Percoco
In late December 1974, Joseph W. Bellacosa was a law professor at St. John’s Law School when adjunct law professor Mario Cuomo walked into his office. The longtime friends had pending offers to move to Albany – Bellacosa to be chief clerk to the Court of Appeals, Cuomo to be Gov. Hugh Carey’s secretary of state.
“Did it occur to you that we may both be making a mistake?” Cuomo wrote in a lighthearted letter to Bellacosa.
In 1987, when then-gov. Mario Cuomo appointed Bellacosa to the Court of Appeals, Bellacosa answered, “Neither of us made a mistake!”
Thirty-one years later it is less clear that Bellacosa did not make a mistake on July 11 — the day he wrote a letter to a federal judge on behalf of Joseph Percoco, who last week was sentenced to six years in prison.
Bellacosa, 81, attested to Percoco’s “good character” and noted “media distortions” — all while admitting he knew little about the corruption case in which Percoco, the former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was convicted of taking more than $320,000 in bribes.
The current governor has referred to Percoco as “my father’s third son and my brother.”
Bellacosa, a native of Brooklyn who lived in Guilderland for several years, explained he knew Percoco to an extent, then became reacquainted with him at the funeral of Mario Cuomo. Bellacosa and Percoco became close friends through their church in Ridgefield, Conn., where the retired judge moved in 2009. Bellacosa informed U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni he witnessed Percoco up close in the St. Mary Parish Men’s Ministry, a group of 50 to 70 men who meet to discuss personal spiritual awareness and improvement in family and parental relationships.
“This dynamic of rotating table interactions brought his legal troubles to my attention in a spiritual dimension,” Bellacosa wrote in the July 11 letter. “What has struck me poignantly is his basic decency, value system and family commitment.”
Bellacosa wrote his “appreciation of this individual” was formed by consistent and direct observations.
“In my opinion, these are truer measures of the individual than
the media distortions caricatured out of the anomalous circumstances that have brought him to the bar of justice,” Bellacosa wrote.
“I should emphasize that I know little of the details of the case itself in any of its legal or evidentiary dimensions and ramifications,” Bellacosa continued.
The retired judge said he avoided discussions with Percoco “so I can keep my preparation and content of this letter focused on the good character of the friend I have come to know with soulbearing (sic) intimacy.”
Bellacosa said he spoke with about a half-dozen parishioners in the men’s group who urged him, out of concern for Percoco and his family, to add that they concur in their positive assessment of Percoco’s character.
Barry Bohrer, the attorney for Percoco, referenced Bellacosa’s letter of support for Percoco repeatedly during the sentencing. It was surely not because Percoco and Bellacosa go to the same church.
On Monday, Law Beat asked Bellacosa: Why write the letter?
“Why do that? Because character counts and I know him in a character reference as a friend and a fellow parishioner in the church that we both worship in,” Bellacosa said in a phone interview. “So it’s perfectly appropriate for someone in that situation to write a letter describing to the judge the character of the person and letting that be a factor, as it should be anyway, in sentencing.”
Bellacosa said in preparing for sentencing, Caproni was dealing with the proportionality, individuality and character of the defendant, which can affect the range of sentence.
“In that context, it’s perfectly appropriate,” he said.
Asked if the slew of corruption cases in Albany gave him pause to write such a letter, Bellacosa stood by his decision.
“I purposely indicated it was not with respect to the nature of the case, which I did not know and didn’t want to know and made sure I didn’t know, but it was in relation to the person and the individuality of the sentencing decision,” he said. “Those are perfectly appropriate factors for any sentencing judge to take into consideration.
“How do you, this person from the past, know this person now in this context?” he asked, describing his outlook. “And I described that with very, very great care and very, very great attention to not using my 18-year-old relationship in the court. But this was based on actual development weekby-week of a spiritual encounter with him and other men in this parish in Ridgefield, Conn. Obviously it was up to the sentencing judge to say, ‘I don’t care who he is and I don’t care what he says. I’m not going to take it into consideration.’ But from my standpoint, perfectly appropriate to put something like (that) in on someone who I’ve come to know as a friend and a fellow parishioner, not as a public servant and not in the context of whatever’s gone on in Albany since I long ago left it.”
Still, Bellacosa did not leave out his past career from the letter, wherein he mentioned he and Percoco had a passing acquaintanceship “during my tenure on the New York State Court of Appeals from 1987 to 2000.”