Crime & Safety
DA: Great Neck Man's 1988 Child Sex Abuse Conviction Reaffirmed
Advisory panel "prepared" to recommend that conviction of Jesse Friedman be overturned, but that was not the case.
In a 155-page report released Monday by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, an independent advisory panel re-affirmed the 1988 child sex abuse conviction of a Great Neck man.
Jesse Friedman, now 46, was 18 years old when police and prosecutors charged him and his father, Arnold Friedman, with sexually abusing more than a dozen local children enrolled in a computer class taught at the Friedmans’ Great Neck home. The pair pleaded guilty and each was sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
Jesse Friedman served 13 years in prison and was paroled in 2001 without ever appealing his conviction. Upon his release from prison, Friedman was adjudicated a level three sex offender, a status he maintains today.
Find out what's happening in Great Neckwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In 2004, Jesse Friedman chose for the first time in the 16 years since he pleaded guilty to try and overturn his conviction.
According to Rice, Friedman's claims were based exclusively on what he believed was “newly discovered evidence” depicted in the 2003 film "Capturing the Friedmans." The film attempts to cast the Friedmans as possible victims of police misconduct, community hysteria, and judicial bias. While Friedman’s efforts were met by a string of legal defeats, included in the last of Friedman’s denied federal court motions was a 2010 recommendation that the Nassau DA’s Office re-examine the case.
Find out what's happening in Great Neckwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In August of 2003, Rice announced that she would re-open the case and for the first time in state history select an independent panel of experts to guide a conviction integrity investigation.
The nearly three-year investigation that analyzed existing information and unearthed significant new evidence affirmed the conviction of Jesse Friedman, according to Rice. The investigation also added critical context, and in some cases supplied refuting evidence, to the central theories advanced by Jesse Friedman and his advocates.
In a statement Monday, Rice said the investigative team was fully prepared to exonerate Mr. Friedman if that’s where the facts led them but the facts led to a substantially different conclusion.
"This exhaustive and impartial process has only strengthened the justice system’s confidence that Jesse Friedman was involved in the sexual abuse of children,” said Rice.
None of the five individuals who Friedman advocates suggest “recanted” have, in fact, recanted to any degree of legal certainty, according to the report. Three have not recanted at all.
The report says 13 children accused Jesse Friedman of criminal misconduct within the first five weeks of the investigation.
Unedited film transcripts of Judge Abbey Boklan and Detective Anthony Squeglia show that each was the subject of selectively edited and misleading film portrayals in "Capturing the Friedmans," according to Rice.
The “Meyers Tape” – one of only two pieces of direct evidence of heavy-handed police interviewing techniques cited by Friedman, his advocates and the Court – is, in fact, no tape at all. All that remains of a tape that hasn’t existed for more than two decades are notes taken during its screening by a Jesse Friedman attorney. Those notes, presumably limited to information the attorney found helpful to his client’s case, were then reduced and curated by filmmakers, and read dramatically by Friedman’s attorney in "Capturing the Friedmans."
Jesse Friedman’s willingness to tell the truth has been inconsistent, especially as it pertained to his many descriptions of his father’s guilt, his own possible victimhood, and his prior relationship with his former friend and codefendant, Ross Goldstein, according to the investigation's findings.
The full report and appendix are available on the Nassau County district attorney’s website.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
