Case of Ross Goldstein
("Capturing The Friedman's)
Great Neck, NY
Convicting of sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance. He was Sentenced to four concurrent indeterminated terms of 2 to 6 years imprisonment.
Please note that there are several people who go by the name of Ross Goldstein.
Please note that there are several people who go by the name of Ross Goldstein.
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Table of Contents:
1990
- The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Ross G., Appellant (07/18/1990)
- Victims' Parents Denounce Abuser's Release (07/29/1990)
2013
- Teenager’s 1988 Sexual-Abuse Conviction Was Justified, Report Says (06/24/2013)
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Please Note: Ross Goldstein - court proceeding (document does not use full name)
163 A.D.2d 529, *; 558 N.Y.S.2d 603, **;
1990 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8786, ***
The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Ross G., Appellant
No. 1081E
Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, Second Department
163 A.D.2d 529; 558 N.Y.S.2d 603; 1990 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8786
June 28, 1990, Argued July 18, 1990
PRIOR HISTORY: [***1]
Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the County Court, Nassau County (Boklan, J.), rendered May 3, 1989, convicting him of sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance, upon his plea of guilty, and sentencing him to four concurrent indeterminate terms of 2 to 6 years imprisonment.
DISPOSITION: ORDERED that the judgment is modified, as a matter of discretion in the interest of justice, by (1) vacating the provision thereof convicting the defendant of sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance and substituting therefor a provision adjudicating him a youthful offender, upon his plea of guilty to sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance, and (2) reducing the sentence to a term of six months imprisonment and five years probation, with the terms of imprisonment running concurrently with and as a condition of the term of probation; as so modified, the judgment is affirmed, and the matter is remitted to the County Court, Nassau County, to fix the other terms and conditions of probation.
CASE SUMMARY
PROCEDURAL POSTURE: Defendant sought review of the decision of the County Court, Nassau County (New York), which convicted him of sodomy in the first degree and use of a child in a sexual performance, upon his plea of guilty, and sentenced him to four concurrent indeterminate terms of two to six years imprisonment.
OVERVIEW: In connection with the investigation of a child molester, police were led to defendant, a friend of the accused molester, who had also sexually abused some of the boys. Defendant was 15 and 16 years old when he committed the crimes. The prosecution agreed that in return for defendant's testimony, it would recommend that defendant receive a sentence of no more than six months in jail, youthful offender status, and probation in exchange for his testimony against the molester. After receiving the benefits of defendant's testimony, the prosecution represented to the victims' families that defendant would not be allowed to plead guilty to anything less than class B violent felonies. The sentencing judge did not grant defendant youthful offender treatment and the prosecution prevented defendant from being sentenced to anything less than two to six years. The court modified the sentence and held that defendant acted to his detriment on the promise of the prosecution, and it was not enough to permit defendant to withdraw his plea, or to promise to foreclose the use of his grand jury testimony if he chose to go to trial because defendant had already complied with his part of the agreement.
OUTCOME: The court modified the judgment by vacating the conviction of defendant of sodomy in the first degree and use of a child in a sexual performance and substituting therefor a provision adjudicating him a youthful offender. The court also reduced the sentence to a term of six months' imprisonment and five years' probation, with the terms of imprisonment running concurrently with and as a condition of probation.
CORE TERMS: youthful offender, cooperation, imprisonment, guilty plea, sentenced, sentence, probation, arrested, sexual, sodomy, judgment of conviction, term of imprisonment, violent felonies, plea of guilty, pleaded guilty, plead guilty, convicting, indictment, sentencing, six-month, cooperate, suspected, attending, recommend, modified, complied, supplied, top
COUNSEL: Kartagener & Stavis, New York, New York, (Steven R. Kartagener [***2] and Roger L. Stavis of counsel), for appellant.
Denis Dillon, District Attorney, Mineola, New York, (Bruce E. Whitney and Kenneth Harris of counsel), for respondent.
JUDGES: Thompson, J. P., Rubin, Rosenblatt and Miller, JJ., concur.
OPINION: [*529] [**603] Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the County Court, Nassau County (Boklan, J.), rendered May 3, 1989, convicting him of sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance, upon his plea of guilty, and sentencing him to four concurrent indeterminate terms of 2 to 6 years' imprisonment.
Ordered that the judgment is modified, as a matter of discretion in the interest of justice, by (1) vacating the provision thereof convicting the defendant of sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance and substituting therefor a provision adjudicating him a youthful offender, upon his plea of guilty to sodomy in the first degree (three counts) and use of a child in a sexual performance, and (2) reducing the sentence to a term of six months' imprisonment and five years' probation, with the terms of imprisonment running concurrently with and as a condition [***3] of the term of probation; as so modified, the judgment is affirmed, [**604] and the matter is remitted to the County Court, Nassau County, to fix the other terms and conditions of probation.
In 1987, Arnold Friedman, a retired high school teacher, was arrested on Federal charges for using the mails to send and receive child pornography. A subsequent investigation disclosed that Friedman, who ran an after-school computer program in his Great Neck home, and his son, Jesse Friedman, had been sexually abusing the young boys who had been regularly attending the computer classes. Arnold Friedman was arrested on State charges with respect to the sexual abuse crimes, and upon his guilty plea, was sentenced, inter alia, to 8 1/3 to 25 years' imprisonment, in addition to his sentence on the Federal charges. In connection with the investigation of the Friedmans, police were led to the defendant, a friend of Jesse Friedman, who had also sexually abused some of the [*530] boys who had been attending the computer classes. The defendant, who was 15 and 16 years old when he committed the crimes, became repulsed by them, and six months before the Friedmans were arrested, the defendant [***4] disassociated himself from Jesse Friedman and his activities. Following the defendant's indictment for a number of sex crimes, including class B violent felonies, the prosecution, with the approval of the victims' families, approached the defendant's counsel and sought the defendant's assistance in strengthening the case against Jesse Friedman, and in providing information concerning two other individuals suspected of being involved in the crimes.
On September 8, 1988, the defendant agreed to cooperate, and the terms of the agreement between the defendant and the prosecution were placed on the record. The prosecution agreed that in return for the defendant's testimony, it would recommend to the sentencing court that the defendant "receive a sentence of no more than six months in jail, youthful offender status, probation and any and all therapy contingent upon that probation which the probation department deems is necessary".
There is no question that the defendant complied with his part of the agreement. The prosecution acknowledged that the defendant "cooperate[d] fully with the Nassau County Police Department and District Attorney's office", and gave extensive testimony before [***5] the Grand Jury. Because of the defendant's cooperation Jesse Friedman pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 6 to 18 years' imprisonment, and the two other individuals suspected of being involved in the crimes were brought to the attention of the police.
After receiving the maximum benefits of the defendant's testimony, the prosecution entered into another set of promises, unbeknownst to the defendant, representing to the victims' families that the defendant would not be allowed to plead guilty to anything less than the top counts of the indictment, which were class B violent felonies. This was not made known to the defendant until February 3, 1989, five months after September 8, 1988, the date of his cooperation agreement, and after he had fully performed his part of the agreement, and had supplied the information and testimony which led to Jesse Friedman's guilty plea and imprisonment.
The defendant entered his guilty plea on March 22, 1989, and was sentenced on May 3, 1989. At the time the defendant pleaded guilty, Judge Boklan stated that based on her review [*531] of the defendant's candid revelations before the Grand Jury (the very testimony which the defendant supplied, [***6] postindictment, by way of cooperation with the prosecution), she would not grant the defendant youthful offender treatment. The prosecution then rejected the defense counsel's urging that the prosecution consent to a guilty plea to a class D felony, which would have enabled the court to impose a six-month term of imprisonment, in keeping with the prosecution's recommendation. After learning that the court would not grant the defendant youthful offender treatment, the prosecution, by refusing to let the defendant plead guilty to any crime below a class B violent felony, prevented the defendant from being legally sentenced to anything less than the 2-to-6-year term of imprisonment which was imposed. [**605] Thus, the prosecution rendered hollow its express promise to recommend a six-month term of imprisonment.
The defendant asserts on appeal that the prosecution's representation to the victims' families, that it would insist on guilty pleas to the top counts, constituted secret, double dealing which violated the "fair import and spirit" of the prosecution's cooperation agreement with the defendant, and that, therefore, the defendant's sentence should be adjusted to reflect the [***7] terms of his cooperation agreement with the prosecution.
We find that by extending promises to the victims' families, after negotiating the cooperation agreement with the defendant, the prosecution betrayed the spirit of the cooperation agreement and its promise to the defendant as to the prospects of his receiving youthful offender treatment and six months' imprisonment. The prosecution has acknowledged that the defendant fully complied with his part of the agreement, and that he was instrumental in the prosecution of one of the key figures in the crime. Although the court, when refusing to grant the defendant youthful offender treatment, gave him the opportunity to withdraw his guilty plea, that offer, under the circumstances of this case, could not adequately remedy the situation created by the prosecution. At that point, the defendant had already totally complied with his part of the agreement, and the prosecution had received and fully benefited from his cooperation. We find that the defendant acted to his detriment on the promise of the prosecution, and it was not enough to permit the defendant to withdraw his plea, or to promise to foreclose the use of his Grand Jury testimony [***8] if he chose to go to trial (see, People v McConnell, 49 NY2d 340, 347-349).
[*532] We cannot countenance a judgment of conviction obtained under these circumstances and therefore vacate the judgment of conviction and adjudicate the defendant a youthful offender. Although there is some question as to whether Judge Boklan applied the proper standard in denying the defendant youthful offender treatment (see, People v Thiessen, 76 NY2d 816), we find that under the circumstances of this case, in light of our determination regarding the prosecution's conduct, it would be inappropriate to remit the matter for resentencing. In the exercise of our discretion in the interest of justice, we reduce the defendant's sentence to the very terms recommended and agreed to by the prosecution. Additionally, we note that the defendant has been incarcerated since being sentenced on May 3, 1989, and thus, has served over one year of incarceration.
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By Jack Curry
New York Times - July 29, 1990
Parents in Great Neck, L.I., are upset at the recent release from prison of a teen-ager who was part of a group that sexually abused children during computer classes at the home of a former high school teacher there.
''The children have exhibited a real fear of this person,'' said the mother of one of the victims, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''If we drive by the house, they hit the floor in the car. They ask constantly when he is going to get out of prison or if he could escape.''
The former prisoner, Ross Goldstein, 19 years old, was released from Collins Correctional Facility in Helmuth, N.Y., on July 21 and his criminal record was sealed after the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn ruled that prosecutors had failed to keep an agreement with him in return for his testimony against Arnold and Jesse Friedman, the father and son who led the group abusing the boys
The appellate court ruled that the prosecution ''betrayed the spirit of the cooperation agreement'' by promising the victims' families that Mr. Goldstein would not be allowed to plead guilty to any crime carrying less than a 2-to-6-year sentence.
The appellate court said Nassau County prosecutors had already promised Mr. Goldstein that they would recommend that he be sentenced to no more than six months and be treated as a youthful offender, meaning that his criminal record would be expunged once his sentence was served. He was 15 and 16 years old when the crimes were committed.
Court Vacates Harsher Sentence
When he was sentenced, the appellate court said, Judge Abbey Boklan of Nassau County Court refused to accept the six-month limit or to treat him as a youthful offender because of the crimes he had admitted in his grand jury testimony. The prosecution then offered him only a chance to plead guilty to Class B felonies - sodomy and using a child in a sexual performance - which carried a minimum 2-to-6-year sentence.
On July 18, the court, criticizing both the District Attorney's office and the lower court judge, vacated Mr. Goldstein's sentence and gave him youthful offender status. He had served 15 months, so he was released.
Many parents said they were furious over the youthful offender designation.
''He can become a teacher or work at a day-care center and no one will know what he did,'' said the mother of another victim. ''This should be part of his life just as it is part of ours.''
''The deal was made to get Jesse Friedman,'' the mother said. ''We didn't need a deal like that. We had him anyway.'' Arnold Friedman, a former teacher at Bayside High School in Queens, and his son, Jesse, were arrested on Nov. 26, 1987 and eventually charged with more than 400 counts of sexual abuse of boys from 7 to 11 years old during computer classes at the Friedman home. Mr. Goldstein was charged with 118 counts of sexual abuse.
In December 1988, after Mr. Goldstein testified before the grand jury, Jesse Friedman pleaded guilty to 25 counts of sexual abuse and was sentenced to six to 18 years. Arnold Friedman, then 58, had pleaded guilty earlier to distributing child pornography through the mail and to sexual abuse. He is serving a 10-to-30-year sentence. The District Attorney's office said its plea deal was misunderstood.
''He was never promised that we were going to knock down his plea of guilty,'' said Edward Grilli, a spokesman. ''We said we would recommend a six-month sentence and we did.''
Several parents criticized the prosecutors' strategy, but Mr. Grilli said the case ''wasn't thrown away.''
''Ross Goldstein served time in prison and the principals involved are serving long prison terms, in large part because of him,'' he said. ''We were able to obtain guilty pleas because of his testimony.''
Michael Cornacchia, Mr. Goldstein's lawyer, said his client was getting counseling.
''Any thought that he is a threat is totally baseless,'' he said. ''Ross wasn't a monster. He was a 15-year old kid when this happened.''
He refused to say where Mr. Goldstein will live.
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By Peter Applebome
In a 155-page report written with very little ambiguity, the Nassau County district attorney, Kathleen M. Rice, concluded that none of four issues raised in 2010 in a strongly worded ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit were substantiated by the evidence.
Instead, it concluded, “By any impartial analysis, the reinvestigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman, his advocates and the Second Circuit, has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender.”
The review concludes another chapter in a case that came to national attention after the 2003 release of the film, which portrayed both the breakup of a deeply troubled family and what was characterized as a flawed, biased police investigation and judicial process. The case led to guilty pleas in 1988 by Jesse Friedman, then 18, and his father, Arnold Friedman, who ran a popular computer class at his house on Piccadilly Road in the affluent Long Island community of Great Neck.
The report’s conclusion was not entirely unexpected, even by Mr. Friedman and his advocates, given the explosive nature of the charges, the impossibility of a definitive finding on many of the allegations more than 25 years in the past and the high bar for prosecutors to overturn convictions, especially those based on confessions.
Still, Mr. Friedman’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, and the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki, reacted with disappointment and anger, saying the report was a biased whitewash by the office that originally botched the case. Mr. Kuby promised to pursue appeals.
“D.A. Kathleen Rice has made a craven, but not surprising, political decision in failing to admit to the wrongdoing of the Nassau County D.A.’s office and former sex crimes chief Fran Galasso, in the face of overwhelming evidence of Jesse’s innocence,” Mr. Jarecki said.
Mr. Kuby said that the district attorney’s office had fought Mr. Friedman’s efforts at every turn and that this was just more of the same.
“My immediate reaction is that we have spent three long years in a pointless waste of time waiting for D.A. Rice to issue this report,” Mr. Kuby said.
“Fortunately, the conclusion of this bogus reinvestigation clears the way for the Friedman team to return to court based upon the new evidence we’ve collected as well as the increasing likelihood of obtaining the original case documents.”
The review led both to evidence supporting the conviction and to evidence suggesting it should be overturned. Perhaps most powerful for the defense was a detailed and chilling statement that it obtained from Ross Goldstein, a high school friend of Jesse Friedman, who was the only person other than the Friedmans convicted in the case. Mr. Goldstein said his confession had been a lie coerced by intimidating police conduct and the threats of a draconian sentence.
In its 2010 decision, the Second Circuit reluctantly upheld the verdict on technical grounds but harshly criticized the trial judge, prosecutors and detectives in the case. The court said there was a “reasonable likelihood” that Jesse Friedman, who served 13 years in prison before being released in 2001, was wrongfully convicted and suggested that Ms. Rice reinvestigate the case. Arnold Friedman died, apparently a suicide, in prison in 1995.
Yet Ms. Rice’s report, in all instances, found that the preponderance of evidence pointed toward upholding the conviction. And her report comes with a limited, but potentially powerful, seal of approval in a case that is also being played out in the court of public opinion.
When she began her review, Ms. Rice, a Democrat first elected in 2005, appointed a four-member independent advisory panel to guide and oversee the work. It included Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project and one of the country’s leading advocates for overturning wrongful convictions.
The report was prefaced by a four-page statement by the panel. It said its job was about process more than findings. It did not reinvestigate the case itself, and it was not given access to key documents like grand jury records and interview reports.
Still, it commended the investigation, and said that if the evidence had pointed toward exoneration, “we have no doubt the Review Team was prepared to recommend without reservation that Friedman’s conviction be overturned.”
The statement, signed by all four members, said it was not the role of the panel to make an ultimate judgment about Jesse Friedman’s guilt, but added: “We do have an obligation to express a view as to whether we believe the conclusions expressed in the Review Team’s report are reasonable and supported by the evidence it cites. We think they are.”
The report centered on four points raised in the film and by the appeals court: that the case may have been tainted by repeated police interviews that pushed children toward confessions; that children may have been hypnotized to recover memories not based on fact; that the case was distorted by a “moral panic” that created false accusations and a predisposition toward conviction; and that Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea may have been unlawfully coerced by the police, prosecutors and a hostile judge.
The review rejected them all. It said that though some interviews late in the case may have been flawed, the rapid pace and early flow of accusations from children in the classes indicated that the allegations arose from spontaneous accounts, not from investigators pushing children toward accusations. It said the first child interviewed reported improper behavior, 12 children leveled accusations of illegal sexual behavior at Arnold Friedman in the investigation’s first two weeks and, five weeks into the investigation, 13 boys described criminal behavior by Jesse Friedman.
It said, that despite one student’s account in “Capturing the Friedmans” of making allegations after being hypnotized, any use of group therapy or hypnosis came after all the indictments were filed. It disputed the one account of hypnosis in the film.
The review said the Friedman case was “in no way similar” to other notorious cases of its time, like the McMartin preschool case, which produced allegations of satanic ritual abuse of children but ended with no convictions. The review said that the children in this case were twice as old as in that one and that many victims complained of abuse early rather than through months of questioning.
And it said Jesse Friedman had competent legal representation, weighed his options intelligently and pleaded guilty after determining it was “the optimal strategy” in light of the available choices.
It cited other evidence damaging to Mr. Friedman’s case — students and parents who stuck by their accounts and added fuller details, a psychiatric evaluation conducted for his defense that labeled him “a psychopathic deviant” and a telephone interview with Arnold Friedman’s brother, Howard Friedman, in which, according to the report, he said: “Jesse is guilty and you’re going to ask me how I know. Because Arnold told me.” He said Arnold Friedman had confessed that both he and his son had “misbehaved” with children in the class, but it is not clear from his statements what that misbehavior might have entailed.
Still, the panel and the review team cited the enormous difficulty in getting to the truth because of the passage of time, incomplete and shoddy record keeping and faded memories. Participation was entirely voluntary, so only some of those involved in the case took part in the investigation. Only three original accusers repeated their accounts to the review team. And many of the figures in the case gave different accounts at different times, making evaluation difficult, the investigators said.
Most glaring of the conflicting accounts was the one given by Mr. Goldstein, who said that “every single thing” in his grand jury testimony had been a lie and that he had been “coached, rehearsed and directed” by a prosecutor and a detective to tell the story they wanted, which was devastating for Jesse Friedman’s defense. The review said his recantation was unreliable.
Ms. Rice said in a statement that “instances of wrongful conviction are real and exist in far greater numbers than any of us would like to admit.” But she added: “The case against Jesse Friedman is not one of them.”
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