San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Defense lawyer for Trump, many others
Ronald Fischetti, a preeminent criminal defense lawyer whose clients included, among many others, former President Donald Trump and a police officer accused of torturing a Haitian immigrant in a case that shocked New York City, died Nov. 25 in Stamford, Conn. He was 87.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Rae Fischetti.
Ronald Fischetti was widely seen as a tiger of the defense bar, noted for his dexterous and relentless cross-examinations defending white-collar defendants and mobsters — a courtroom style leavened with a neighborly touch honed during his early days as a politician. He coupled his legal savvy, when necessary, with a flair for building a parallel case out of court through the news media.
Gerald B. Lefcourt, a fellow defense lawyer, characterized Fischetti as “fearless, funny in front of juries, and equally comfortable with clients in whitecollar cases as well as alleged mob clients.”
Fischetti represented Trump in two investigations into his corporate finances. One was dropped by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg early in 2022; the other was conducted by New York state Attorney General Letitia James, during which Trump refused to answer questions more than 400 times at a deposition in August because, he said, the answers might incriminate him.
James has been leading a three-year civil investigation into whether the former president fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans and other benefits.
Fischetti said that during four hours of questioning, with several breaks, Trump answered only one question, confirming his name.
Among Fischetti’s most prominent other cases was his representation of Charles Schwarz, a white Brooklyn police officer, in the assault of the Black Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, who had been arrested after a fight outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997.
Following his arrest, Louima, was sodomized with a broken broomstick by another white police officer in the 70th Precinct station house.
After a courtroom marathon of three inconclusive trials and
convictions that were overturned, fueling racial tensions in the city, Schwarz faced a fourth trial on two civil rights counts for taking part in the torture and one count of perjury for denying that he was present when Louima was assaulted by Officer Justin A. Volpe, who had already pleaded guilty.
Fischetti persuaded prosecutors in July 2002 to let Schwarz serve a five-year sentence for perjury. In return, the civil rights charges were dropped. Schwarz served about 2 1/2 years. (Volpe served more than 20 years in prison and was released under supervision in June.)
“The worst that Chuck did is that he saw Mr. Volpe walking Mr. Louima toward the bathroom, and when he was asked about that, a cop being a cop, he said he didn’t remember it,” Fischetti told The New York Times in 2007.
Schwarz had been represented by a police union lawyer when he was first convicted. Fischetti’s firm handled the next two trials without fees.
“It was a personal failing; I lost that case,” he said. But he refused to give up on saving the accused officer from what could have been life imprisonment.
With co-counsel, Fischetti also represented former Rep. Robert Garcia, a Bronx Democrat, and his wife, Jane Lee, who
were convicted in the scandal surrounding Wedtech, a Bronxbased military contractor charged with obtaining lucrative government contracts by bribing public officials. In 1990, the Garcia and Lee convictions were reversed on appeal. Both defendants were found guilty of conspiracy and extortion in a second trial; that conviction was also overturned.
Mark F. Pomerantz, the author of “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account” (2023), was Fischetti’s law partner in the 1980s but, with Fischetti now well into his 80s, he became his adversary when he was named a special assistant district attorney in the investigation of Trump’s finances.
“My colleagues in the district attorney’s office asked me if, given his age, Ron had perhaps ‘lost something off his fastball,’” Pomerantz wrote. “I replied that he never really relied on his fastball; even in his prime days as a lawyer he threw a lot of nasty curveballs and even a few spitballs.”
Ronald Paul Fischetti was born May 25, 1936, in Brooklyn to Anthony and Florence (Oppedisano) Fischetti. His mother was a telephone operator, his father a letter carrier.
After graduating from St. John’s Preparatory School in Queens, Fischetti earned a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s
University in 1957 and a law degree from St. John’s Law School in 1961.
While in law school, he worked at a department store on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, where he earned a bonus and got an extra commission — and a bit of training in persuasion — if he could sell boys husky-size suits.
Fischetti, who had been a debater in college, campaigned for John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, then challenged Rep. John Murphy as an anti-Vietnam War candidate in the 1970 Democratic primary for a seat that included Staten Island and a portion of Brooklyn. Fischetti lost.
In 1957, he married Raffaela Coiro, who persuaded him to abandon politics and practice law full time. At his death, he was a partner in the Manhattan firm Fischetti & Malgieri.
He was also an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law and a founder and past president of the New York Council of Defense Lawyers.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Anthony and Ronald; a daughter, Lisa Fischetti Bell; a sister, Florence Walensky; and four granddaughters.
In 2002, Nat Hentoff, writing in The Village Voice, defended Fischetti from criticism that he
was a mob lawyer who had ultimately prevailed in the Schwarz case in court by manipulating the press.
“Fischetti, who has taught at Fordham University Law School and has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Cardozo, NYU and Yale law schools, is hardly a role model for a character on ‘The Sopranos,’” Hentoff wrote. “By the way, Fischetti’s last ‘mob’ case was 15 years ago.”
Fischetti defended, unsuccessfully, Gambino crime boss Gene Gotti in the late 1980s, arguing that the ramblings of mobsters on secretly recorded tapes were an unfair test of their true intentions. Rather, he said, they were more like the hyperbole of an impetuous parent.
“When they say to somebody, as an example, ‘If he does that again, I’ll kill him,’ they don’t mean that they will physically kill him,” Fischetti told The Times. “It’s a manner of speech, much as you would say in a gentler way to a child or a loved one, ‘I’ll break your leg.’”
No matter the client, Fischetti drew the respect of the prosecutors he battled. To Daniel R. Alonso, an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn who spoke to the Times in 2002, Fischetti was “a really good cross-examiner.”
He had, Alonso said, “that No. 1 skill all great cross-examiners have — which is, he has a sixth sense for blood.”