Talk Bronx New York

 The woman whose false rape accusations put an innocent man in prison for four years wouldn’t have admitted her story was a lie if she knew she was pregnant at the time, according to court documents.

Biurny Peguero Gonzalez told investigators she wouldn’t have come forward during confessional with her priest if she knew she was going to have a child. “She said that had she been aware of her pregnancy, she probably would not have confessed when she did,” the papers state.

According to the Post, the documents filed by the prosecution also reveal that after learning of her pregnancy, Gonzalez tried to avoid contacting authorities. The 27-year-old—who claimed she was raped in Upper Manhattan in 2005 to cover up a fight with her girlfriends and make them feel sorry for her—reportedly lied to her priest by saying she couldn’t confess to her lawyer because she had lost her cellphone.

When she finally called her attorney, “it was from a church phone, with the priest watching to be sure she finished the job,” the tabloid notes. Gonzalez’s admission allowed Bronx construction worker William McCaffrey, 33, to have his 20-year sentence overturned. Gonzalez was sentenced yesterday 1 to 3 years behind bars for perjury. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Nearly every level of the Bronx criminal justice system was racing on Wednesday to deal with the ramifications of an appellate court decision that declared the 2004 merger of the borough’s Criminal Court and Supreme Court unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the State Office of Court Administration filed for a stay of the decision. The Bronx district attorney’s office was working on the appeal of the ruling, which came in a criminal case it prosecuted.

Administrative judges moved quickly to transfer 10,000 misdemeanor cases and 8,000 unindicted felonies from Supreme Court to Criminal Court, where such cases were heard before the merger. In addition, 26 judges who had been working in Supreme Court were reassigned back to Criminal Court.

It all made for a hectic day, said Judge Efrain Alvarado, the top administrative judge for criminal matters in the Bronx. “I think it has gone very well considering there was no notice.”

The cause of all the tumult was a decision by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, issued on Tuesday, ruling the merger of the two courts unconstitutional. That threw into question tens of thousands of misdemeanor convictions over the last five years. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Bronx City Councilman Larry Seabrook surrendered this morning to federal authorities in Manhattan to face a 13-count indictment accusing him of money laundering and fraud as part of an ongoing probe stemming from a slush fund scandal, according to an indictment unsealed today.

Seabrook, a Democrat who has been a member of the City Council since 2001, has been under investigation by the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan and the City Department of Investigation in connection to city contracts he helped secure for various Bronx community organizations, authorities said.

He is expected to be arraigned later today in Manhattan federal court.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

The mayor, along with Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein, held a press conference in Morris Park this morning to announced the introduction of a state law that would make it illegal to carry guns while drunk.

The “drunk guns” law would work much like the state’s drunk driving laws, which make it illegal to drive a vehicle if your blood-alcohol level is above .08 percent. A violation would be considered a class-A misdemeanor offense and punishments could include a year in jail and/or a $10,000 fine. It could also lead to the revocation of gun licenses.

“Guns and alcohol are a deadly mix,” said Senator Klein, in a statement sent out after the announcement. “The time is now for us to get serious about penalties for those who chose to carry a gun while intoxicated.” Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

A police officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who spotted a city police sport-utility vehicle oddly parked at La Guardia Airport on Saturday discovered that it had been stolen that morning in the Bronx, the authorities said.

The S.U.V., a Chevrolet Tahoe, which was attached to the Police Department’s Highway Unit, was parked by an officer at 7:33 a.m. near Pelham Parkway South and Cruger Avenue in the Bronxdale neighborhood, the police said.

As the officer, Nelson Robles, left the vehicle idling and unattended to enter a store, a man jumped inside and drove off, the police said.

Officer Robles, a 15-year veteran, had gone into the store “for personal reasons,” an official said, without elaborating.

Later, after the officer was interviewed by supervisors, he was suspended without pay and stripped of his gun and badge, the police said.

About 20 minutes after the S.U.V. was stolen, the vehicle — equipped with lights and sirens, along with departmental logos on its side — turned up in front of the US Airways terminal at La Guardia, in Queens. There, the Port Authority officer, Mohammed Anwar Sadat, spotted it around 8 a.m., according to a law enforcement official. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post