re: #354 SteveMcGaziBolaGate

Oh, by the way, glossed over in that Vice story,
“Like many men of color in heavily policed neighborhoods, he’d had his share of arrests. Most were for minor violations, like turnstile-jumping, but a few of the charges were more serious. When he was still a teenager, he plea-bargained to a felony.”
That’s the extent of the detail.

“In the days following the arrest, anonymous law enforcement used tabloids like he New York Post to smear Orta as a hardened criminal. The Post quoted a claim from one unnamed cop who said that Orta had “24 previous arrests including for rape, assault and robbery with a boxcutter.” But when his attorneys ran through the rap sheet with me, I found that Orta had far fewer arrests then this cop had stated—and that he’d never been charged with rape. (The lawyers would not go on the record with specifics about their client’s past charges or convictions.)

“Statements have been made in both open court and to the media by “anonymous law enforcement sources, which are demonstrably false and simply misleading.” Orta’s attorney William Aronin told me. “We believe these are obvious attempts to prejudice the potential jury pool and the online comments to these articles seem to suggest that it may be working.”