Abelove accused of stonewalling
Attorney general’s staff testifies ex-district attorney, police blocked investigation
Two members of the state attorney general’s office testified Thursday that former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove and Troy police stonewalled their requests for information after the 2016 police shooting of Edson Thevenin.
Investigator Mitchell Paurowski, a former Troy police captain who now works in the attorney general’s special investigations and prosecution unit, testified that when he drove up to the scene near the Collar City Bridge on the night of April 17, 2018, Capt. Richard Sprague walked up, leaned in and said, “Let me tell you something right now — this is a clean shoot.”
Paurowski said he told Sprague, “You mind if I put the car in park first and take a look?”
Paurowski said Assistant Police Chief George Vanbramer told officers at the scene not to give him any information: “Get him out! Get him out! He gets nothing,” the assistant chief yelled, according to the witness.
The testimony came on the third day of Abelove’s perjury and official misconduct trial in Rensselaer County Court. Prosecutors for Attorney General Letitia James contend Abelove, 51, who served
as Rensselaer County’s top prosecutor from 2014 to 2018, rushed the case through the grand jury that cleared Sgt. Randall French of any criminal wrongdoing in Thevenin’s death.
Paurowski said he met Abelove at the scene just hours after the incident and explained that if his unit was going to investigate the incident, he would need information such as photographs, videos and documents.
“(Abelove’s) response was, ‘I don’t know what — if anything — I’m going to give you yet,’” Paurowski testified.
Two days later, Paurowski said, he hand-delivered a letter from the attorney general’s office to Abelove seeking radio transmissions, any video footage, medical reports and statements of witnesses.
But once again, Abelove failed to provide information, he said. Instead, the district attorney put the case before a grand jury on April 22 — just five days after the shooting.
Paul Clyne, a former Albany County district attorney who now works as a deputy chief in Paurowski’s unit, later testified that he learned of Thevenin’s shooting when Abelove called him just hours after it happened. He said Abelove indicated French shot Thevenin after he was pinned by the dead man’s car.
Clyne testified that Abelove told him he “felt like the shooting was justified” because Thevenin’s car was a “dangerous instrument” pinning French, which under the law made him “armed” and made the case not eligible for an investigation by the attorney general’s office under the language of a 2015 executive order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
“I said, ‘OK, that may be, butwehavetotakealookat this thing,’” Clyne testified, adding that Abelove was “very insistent” that Thevenin’s car was a dangerous weapon.
Clyne said he received a call from the attorney general’s press office informing him that the Times Union’s Brendan J. Lyons had called the office after Abelove stated at a news conference that the attorney general’s office “signed off” and relinquished the case to the county. Clyne, who had been unaware of the news conference, said he called Abelove, who denied saying that.
Clyne said when he last spoke to Abelove the same day, the district attorney had made no mention of putting the case before a grand jury. He said the attorney general’s office had not received any information, let alone had enough information to decide whether it could investigate the killing. Clyne said he learned that the grand jury had cleared French from a news report on the radio the day it happened.
Three days after the grand jury’s decision, a letter arrived at the attorney general’s office from Abelove to Jen Sommers, deputy chief of the attorney general’s special investigations and prosecution unit, stating that he understood the attorney general would not want jurisdiction over the case but would continue to ascertain the facts.
In the letter, Abelove again cited Thevenin’s car as a dangerous instrument — and said he was “troubled” by what he described as the manner in which the attorney general’s office was using the media.