From the NY Sun, July 25
Protecting Politicians
By Henry J. Stern
July 24, 2003
The significance of the murder of Councilman James Davis lies both in the crime itself and the place where it was committed. The crime was the first killing of a New York City Council member in anyone’s memory. The most notorious murder of a council member in America took place in San Francisco on November 27, 1978, when a former city supervisor, Dan White, crawled through a basement window to avoid metal detectors and killed Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Council Member Harvey Milk. White, who had resigned as supervisor in protest at the passage of a gay rights bill, was convicted on two counts of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison, an incredibly short prison term for such a monstrous crime. The failure to convict on a double murder charge and the light sentence was due in part to White’s lawyer pleading the Twinkie defense — bringing in a psychiatrist to testify that White had eaten so much junk food that he had suffered a major mood disorder and could not tell right from wrong. White was paroled after five years and one month and committed suicide 21 months later, in the garage of his wife’s home.
In New York City, the last public official to be killed was former Brooklyn State Senator Vander Beatty, who was shot to death in his campaign office on August 30, 1990. Beatty, who had served two and one-half years in prison for election fraud and stealing anti-poverty funds, was slain by a retired corrections captain, Arthur Flournoy, who was said to be furious because Beatty had recommended a lawyer, Harry Pollak, to represent him in a dispute over money with his estranged wife. Flournoy lost the case, and was dissatisfied with Pollak’s ability and diligence. Pollak had represented Beatty in the fraud case, in which the former state senator was convicted and imprisoned.
After the murder, Flournoy’s car was found stalled in a puddle a few blocks from Beatty’s office. Flournoy fled to Chicago and was arrested there after a viewer recognized him on the television show, “America’s Most Wanted.” He was tried in Brooklyn in January 1993 and acquitted because the jurors found the evidence circumstantial. A Brooklyn judge had previously ruled that evidence that people who saw Flournoy leave the building, and who had identified him from photographs as the killer, was inadmissible because the Brooklyn district attorney’s office had not notified the defense attorney of the existence of such evidence soon enough. The New York Times, in a story by Joseph Fried, quoted Flournoy’s attorney as saying, “The real killer is still out there.” That was a year before the O.J. Simpson murder case, where that hypocritical phrase became nationally known. The Beatty story is retold here not only because it deals with the murder of a former elected official, but because it is relevant with regard to the state of criminal justice today in New York State’s most populous county.
The security breach at City Hall was the result of a rational decision that elected officials and their guests may enter without being searched for weapons. No person should be blamed for a two-year-old policy that made sense until yesterday. What we now understand is that murderers, or terrorists, can deceive elected officials and others, and therefore, in the interest of public safety, we should take no chances, even if it means delay and inconvenience. Lesson learned.
Since a deranged person with a gun in City Hall could have attempted a Columbine-type massacre of civilians, including the mayor and the council members, we must reduce the risk of disaster. We are all grateful to the brand- new detective, Richard Burt, who shot and killed the assassin, imposing immediate capital punishment in the public interest. This occurred one day after the execution of the brothers Hussein, who resisted arrest in a house in Mosul. I think that Uday should have made his 14-year-old son surrender, rather than let him die in a gun battle. But then, having seen the “Terminator” movies, who knows what impact his survival would have had on future world events.
Back to New York, even if City Hall security were perfect, Askew could have killed Davis anywhere else, with a better chance of escaping, as Flournoy did. On the other hand, if security had magged him and found the silver handgun, he would have been arrested and Davis would have lived. As a former police officer, Davis himself was armed. The practice in federal court, however, is that even people who have the right to carry guns — e.g., police officers — must check them near the building entrance, unless they are assigned to security duties in the courthouse.
This tragic incident in a historic location will briefly give us the image of Dodge City rather than New York. But this was an individual grudge-murder, not random violence, which should provide some comfort to the rest of us. New York is still the safest large city in America, with one-third the number of murders that we had before Mayor Giuliani took office in 1994.
We bury the two dead men, one in honor and pride and the other in pity and shame, life goes on, and, hopefully, City Hall will be off limits to those who would take the lives of others.
Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.