Challenger in DA race tries to quash controversy
Says she regrets ’ 92 ‘ fat women’ sarcasm
The recently declared independent candidate for Allegheny County district attorney is fending off allegations that she’s racist and biased against fat people after comments she made in a court proceeding 27 years ago were resurrected on social media.
Lisa Middleman, a veteran lawyer in the county public defender’s office, did not deny making provocative comments in 1992 during a meeting with a judge in his chambers about a hearing on jury selection. But on Monday she described her long- ago words as purposely over the top and tongue- incheek and said they were uttered as a way to mock opposing prosecutors and show them how ridiculous their own arguments sounded.
Ms. Middleman, who posted a defense of her words on her campaign website, said a 1996 article in the Pittsburgh PostGazette about the comments did not reveal the whole story about why she said what she did, and she added that her meaning was lost in translation.
“I was cocky and sarcastic and obnoxious in responding to their allegations,” she said Monday. “The verbiage I used could be hurtful to people.”
Ms. Middleman, who submitted more than 11,000 signatures on Sunday to get her name on November’s ballot, believes the 23- year- old article was circulated over the weekend by supporters of her opponent, incumbent District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.
“The motive is clearly to try to smear my reputation and to fracture communities who support me,” she said. “I think they’re putting stuff out like this because they know I’m a genuine threat, in that I have the experience, intellect and support to win this election.”
Mr. Zappala said Monday afternoon, “I don’t have any comment.”
Although Ms. Middleman said she regretted the words she used in 1992, she does not regret what she was trying to accomplish.
“I will never be sorry for fighting for my clients like a dog, whether they were black or white, or if I liked them or did not like them,” she said.
“I was mocking the justification the district attorneys used.”
The article in question, which began circulating on social media over the weekend, ran in the Post- Gazette on Oct. 7, 1996. It was a companion piece to another story about jury selection starting in the case involving Jonny Gammage, a black man who was killed by police officers in the South Hills in 1995 after he was pulled over for driving erratically.
The article, “Dismissing Blacks in ’ 92 Challenged,” discussed a 1992 case in which Ms. Middleman defended a white
teen accused of offering money and cigarettes to three teenagers in exchange for them spray- painting a racial epithet on the Bethel Park home of a biracial couple.
During jury selection for the trial of W. Scott MacIntyre, the prosecution accused Ms. Middleman of purposely striking four of five black potential jurors in the 35- person pool because of their race.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Raymond Novak conducted an inchambers hearing on the issue.
Ms. Middleman said, according to the article, that she didn’t exclude the jurors based on race. Instead, she struck one, she claimed, because he was unemployed and older and another because he gave her client a hostile look.
A black female juror was struck, Ms. Middleman said, because she was heavy.
“This sounds very conceited,” Ms. Middleman said at the time. “I don’t like fat women on my jury because I don’t want them to be jealous that I’m not fat. That’s a stupid reason, it is nonetheless a reason I think of.”
According to the story, she then said, “I don’t want fat, ugly women on my jury because I don’t — it sounds like that commercial, ‘ don’t hate me because I’m beautiful’ — I don’t want them to dislike me.”
Judge Novak called Ms. Middleman’s explanations “somewhat incredible,” the article said, and allowed the case to proceed with the jurors that were chosen.
They acquitted Ms. Middleman’s client.
On Monday, Ms. Middleman said the entire scenario arose because, during that time frame, she had accused the prosecution of often improperly striking potential black jurors in her other public defender cases.
The reasons the prosecutors gave then, she said, were insincere and unbelievable.
“I was mocking the justification the DAs used,” she said. “You can’t get sarcasm, you can’t get emotion from a typewriter. Nothing I said was true, and the judge knew what I was saying wasn’t true.”
Ms. Middleman said she has nothing against fat people or anyone else.
“I certainly would not eliminate anyone from a jury for such a moronic reason,” she said. “In every single case I’ve ever tried, I did what’s best for my client within the law.”
Under federal law, it is illegal to strike jurors based on race.