DA can’t dish off cop rape case

An administrative judge has rejected requests to drop the Brooklyn district attorney’s office from the case involving two former detectives charged with raping an 18-year-old woman in a police van and name a special prosecutor.

Judge Matthew D’Emic denied requests from the DA, the defense and the victim’s lawyer to name a special prosecutor to handle the case against ex-Detectives Richard Hall and Eddie Martins, who are accused of raping the victim known as Anna Chambers in an NYPD van on Sept. 15, 2017.

The DA’s office had asked off the case because they said Chambers had made a series of false, misleading and inconsistent statements, some of them under oath. In addition, Chambers made a series of social media posts attacking prosecutors.

In a case that has been bizarre almost from the outset, at the request of the DA’s office, the judge appointed a criminal defense lawyer in January to represent Chambers because she was exposed to a possible perjury charge.

But D’Emic ruled all of that wasn’t enough to remove the DA’s office from the case.

“Although it is certainly distressing for a prosecutor to confront a lying witness, it is not uncommon,” D’Emic wrote. “The fact that the complainant is critical of the office is of no concern to the analysis of whether this constitutes reasonable grounds for disqualification.”

Martins’ lawyer, Mark Bederow, underlined the fact that the DA has publicly said Chambers repeatedly lied.

“They have stated that they cannot ethically present her as a witness,” he said. “Therefore, the only way they can ethically proceed is to dismiss all of the rape and other sex crime charges, which is 44 of the 50 counts in the indictment.”

A spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said, “Our office will continue to evaluate how to carefully and ethically proceed in this case, and we are committed to holding these defendants accountable.”