There are still eight (count ’em, eight!) candidates running in the Democratic primary for New York County District Attorney, seeking the chair that once held the behinds of legends like Hogan and Morgy, and most recently warmed by Cy Vance who doesn’t need this crap anymore. The flavors of candidates run the gamut, from prosecutors to public defenders, and whoever pulls down the nomination will eventually win the job, because that’s how Manhattan rolls and the Republicans haven’t even managed to find a sacrificial lamb to run against them.
But one has a little secret that makes her stand out from the crowd, and not in a good way.
Diana Florence touts her 25-year career as a Manhattan prosecutor as her biggest selling point in her campaign to be the borough’s next district attorney. She also aims fierce criticism at her former boss, the departing incumbent Cyrus Vance Jr. , saying he catered to the wealthy and powerful.
Now, in an unusual move for a sitting district attorney not running for re-election, Mr. Vance responded, telling The Wall Street Journal through a spokesman that Ms. Florence is distorting her track record.
Cy’s reaction is less about Florence being critical of his use of power, which was entirely fine with her until she got caught in a jam and shown the door at 1 Hogan Place.
Ms. Florence has said during her campaign that she resigned because Mr. Vance unexpectedly slashed resources for a construction fraud task force she led and her supervisors prevented her from pursuing a large-scale fraud investigation. In her resignation letter that became public last year, she complained of a hostile work environment.
So she said, but saying so doesn’t make it so.
Ms. Florence resigned as a Manhattan prosecutor in January 2020, shortly after a judge dismissed one of her high-profile corruption cases when it emerged that she hadn’t turned over evidence to defense attorneys, as the law requires. In an interview, Ms. Florence said she had “directed everything to be turned over, but a mistake was made. As soon as I learned of that, I acknowledged the mistake, I owned it, because that’s who I am.”
It was a case before Justice Michael Obus, as well as a few judges before him, involving bribery of a DEP official to get advance info on RFPs. After being ordered over and over by Justice Stolz to turnover massive quantities of discovery, Florence didn’t until the eve of trial, knowing full well that it was impossible for defense counsel to review it or adjourn the trial because of another months-long trial he was to begin that was the express reason for the trial’s starting date.
While that was bad enough, and it was very bad, that wasn’t all there was. Her prime witness, the flipped DEP guy, gave two earlier statements denying he was bribed, which directly contradicted the testimony he would give at trial. This is about as clear and flagrant a Brady/Giglio violation as there is. No modestly competent prosecutor could possibly not realize this was Brady and had to be turned over. Florence failed to do so. Her conduct was so egregious that Justice Obus did something that almost never happens. He dismissed the case.
Yet here she is, running for District Attorney and trivializing what happened.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Florence’s campaign said she has taken “full responsibility” for the mistake.
Did she?
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus dismissed the indictment, and another conviction that Ms. Florence obtained with the cooperator’s testimony was thrown out. Justice Obus called Ms. Florence’s failure to turn over the evidence “staggering” and said her explanation was “troubling and inadequate.”
Mr. Vance’s spokesman said Ms. Florence never acknowledged the seriousness of the violation. “Even after this was uncovered, former ADA Florence continued to assert that she was not required to turn over the materials,” the spokesman said. “She only admitted making a mistake when she was questioned by the court.”
To be clear, it’s not as if gamesmanship and playing hide-the-Brady doesn’t happen. It does. But Florence is running for DA on a moderately progressive platform (“She wants the office to refocus its energy on cases against the powerful), and committing such a flagrant Brady violation, and then trying to bury it, suggests that she is not someone whose ethics are anywhere near that necessary to be entrusted with the job.
To add insult to injury, she wasn’t even liked in her own office, and not for being too kind to the defense.
Mr. Vance’s spokesman said Ms. Florence’s problems had begun more than a year before she resigned. The spokesman said Ms. Florence was called to a meeting in February 2019 with her supervisors and several of Mr. Vance’s top deputies to discuss numerous complaints of insubordination, her creating a toxic work environment and undermining colleagues in conversations with co-workers and outside agencies.
“Ms. Florence was presented with more than a dozen specific examples of this conduct and was informed that she would be removed from her position as attorney in charge of the task force if her conduct did not improve over the following year,” the spokesman said. A year later, he said, Ms. Florence submitted her letter of resignation on Jan. 21, 2020, the day she was set to receive her annual evaluation.
The reaction was to deflect blame.
Barbara Thompson, Ms. Florence’s campaign treasurer, described the 2019 meeting as “spontaneous,” not a performance evaluation. Ms. Thompson said Ms. Florence received consistent promotions and raises throughout her two decades at the office.
“Like a lot of professional women, Diana was fully committed to her work and successful at it, which didn’t necessarily make her the most popular person in the office,” she said.
Whether she was popular or not, it’s inconceivable that any experienced prosecutor could claim that she was unclear that statements by her primary witness that would directly conflict with the testimony he would give at trial didn’t have to be disclosed as Brady. And whether she either didn’t grasp that it was Brady, or deliberately concealed it from the defense, she’s got no business running for, or being elected as, New York County District Attorney.
There are still plenty of flavors to choose from in the remaining candidates, but Diana Florence is ethically unqualified to run the office. Even if you don’t like the taste of a progressive prosecutor, an unethical one tastes far worse. Florence is either so incompetent that she didn’t recognize flagrant Giglio material or so unethical that she buried it. Either way, she has no business being District Attorney.
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