Former Sheriff Candidate Vindicated After Long Wait
After fighting to prove his innocence for almost nine years, former candidate for Putnam County Sheriff Andrew DeStefano feels “born again” after his conviction for filing forged nominating petitions was overturned and vacated.
DeStefano was a vindicated man last Tuesday when a state appellate court overturned a 2009 conviction connected to his run for sheriff because the court ruled his former attorney, Pat Bonanno, had a conflict of interest representing him. The conviction was vacated and the panel also ruled to reverse a previous decision by a Patterson town justice that upheld the conviction.
“It’s tough because you live your whole life doing the right thing, being honest and now you’re being accused of something you didn’t do,” DeStefano said in an interview.
DeStefano, a longtime Patterson resident and former New York City Police Department captain, previously pleaded guilty to one count of misconduct and 2nd degree offering a false instrument for filing, both misdemeanors. He entered the sheriff’s race in 2009, against incumbent Don Smith and another challenger, Jim Borkowski, a former Southeast justice who was a Republican before he switched political party affiliation to Democratic.
In Sep. 2009, DeStefano informed county Board of Elections officials he was pulling out of the race, according to a Sep. 15, 2009 issue of The Putnam Examiner.
In his case, DeStefano said there were about “100 different things that were done wrong” and every month he would discover something new that proved he wasn’t represented properly.
“This was basically an attempt to manipulate the results of an election,” DeStefano said.
DeStefano’s attorney Daniel Bibb argued in court that Bonanno represented five other targets in the petition investigation, all whom later signed witness immunity agreements with the Putnam County District Attorney’s Office, under the direction of former DA Adam Levy.
DeStefano said the three judges that heard the case during oral arguments were sitting there and shaking their heads in disbelief at what Bibb presented to them.
“We came out of there extremely, extremely confident,” DeStefano said.
The three-judge panel wrote that DeStefano was charged, arraigned, and pleaded guilty on the same day, “without the court defendant having been apprised of the defendant’s attorney’s actual or potential conflict of interest.” The judges went on to write the “undisputed facts” prove a conflict of interest existed with DeStefano’s former attorney.
Bibb, in an interview, said he’s never seen a case where one defense attorney represented six different people that were entangled in the same criminal investigation. Bibb slammed not just Bonanno, but also the DA’s office under Levy, which Bibb alleged “fostered” the conflict of interest issue.
When DeStefano approached Bibb about taking his case on, Bibb said he was skeptical what DeStefano was claiming. The two men know each other from when DeStefano was in the NYPD and Bibb was a Manhattan assistant district attorney.
“On all levels this was a horror show,” Bibb said in an interview. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Bonanno didn’t return a phone call seeking comment. In a past article, Bonanno told The Putnam Examiner, “I represented (DeStefano) zealously as a criminal defense attorney.”
A previous plea deal originally prevented DeStefano from running for office for five years, though that part of the agreement was later struck down by the late Patterson justice John King.
DeStefano stressed how thankful he was for Bibb’s representation, saying if Bibb was his original attorney on the case, he would be sheriff right now.
DeStefano, who is completing a PhD in “Advanced Crime Analysis,” mentioned the overwhelming support he received the past eight years and noted between 50 and 60 people have called him to offer congratulations on the legal win. When asked if he would consider running for office again, DeStefano said, “I’m just excited and my options are totally open.”
