Inside the News

Could her death have been prevented?

   Intelligent and educated, Aasiya Z. Hassan didn't see herself as a victim.

   Others didn't either, until it was too late.

   A week before her brutal slaying and beheading Feb. 12, she filed for divorce from her husband Muzzammil and obtained an order of protection barring him from their home in Orchard Park.

   Before that, she repeatedly called police about his controlling and sometimes physically abusive behavior over a span of 2 1/2 years.

   But she always stopped short of signing charges against him.

Read the details in today's story.

Would an arrest for a relatively minor charge during the past 2 1/2 years prevented the tragic outcome of the couple's marriage?

   That's one of the questions that haunt the people Aasiya left behind.

-- Fred O. Williams

     

Making sense of the incomprehensible

By the time Aasiya Hassan was killed, she'd filed multiple police reports regarding her abusive husband and confided in friends who tried to help her. She wasn't the picture of a shrinking violet, but rather an intelligent, giving and faith-filled woman with many friends. In her own way, she fought back.

Muzzammil Hassan, her husband, is described in contrast as a reserved, money-hungry businessman with a controlling nature that occasionally spilled over into violence. Police reports suggest that Aasiya did just enough to keep herself from becoming a regular punching bag, but shielded her husband from arrest.

Now she's dead — killed in an unimaginably brutal way — and a larger community is left to mourn her passing.

In doing this story, three reporters heard from many people who wondered what more could have been done to save her, and what lessons there are to take away from this shocking tragedy.

— Sandra Tan

Read the full story.

Once again, the coverup was worse than the crime

   Some people never learn.

   It's always the coverup that sinks them in the end.

   Now, the careers of State Supreme Court Justice Joseph G. Makowski and former prosecutor Anne E. Adams are in ruins.

   Makowski resigned in disgrace Friday and Adams pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors for their roles in trying to clear her in a drunken-driving case.

   District Attorney Frank Sedita calls it a "pathetic episode."

   Actually, it has all the makings of a 'Law & Order' "Ripped From the Headlines" episode.

   On Friday, Adams pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drunken driving, offering a false instrument for filing and attempted tampering with physical evidence linked to her Sept. 2 drunken driving arrest in the Town of Hamburg.

   Adams' plea to attempted tampering stems from her actions in securing her own blood sample on Sept. 3 -- the day after her DWI arrest -- and getting her physician to lie about when he drew the blood so she could fool authorities into believing she was not drunk the previous evening.

   Had Adams just pleaded guilty to a DWI charge last September, she wouldn't be in the mess she's in today.

   Sure, she probably would have lost her shot at becoming a judge -- she was eying an open seat on the State Supreme Court late last summer -- had she pleaded to the drunken-driving charge as entitled under the law.

   "A DWI would have screwed that up," Sedita said of her judicial ambition.

   But at least she would have kept her law license.

   Now, keeping her law license seems unlikely, Sedita said.

   And she may lose her University at Buffalo Law School job, too.

   As for Makowski, if he hadn't submitted a false affidavit on her behalf, he would have five more years on the bench, making $136,700 a year.

   Instead, his forced resignation takes effect March 5.

   Sedita didn't file charges against the judge, in return for his recanting the false affidavit, cooperating with prosecutors and resigning his judgeship.

   Some might question letting the judge walk away without any criminal charges.

   What do you think?

  -- Patrick Lakamp

The heavy consequences of 'sexting'

   The suburban teenager shook with sobs last month as she stood up in a federal courtroom and told the story of her involvement with a sexual predator.

   It all started with the teen taking nude pictures of herself and using her cell phone to send them to someone she met on the Internet.

   Someone who said he was 20 years old and called himself "sex master Adam."

   Instead, the pictures went to David Evans, a 48-year-old man who kept demanding more pictures and then threatened to harm her family if she refused to send them, the girl said.

   She said that, after her experience with Evans and other men in her life, she didn't know if she could ever trust another man again.

   Evans was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison for using a fake MySpace identity to coerce teenage girls into creating child pornography. The two suburban girls who testified at his sentencing exemplify what can happen when teens indulge in "sexting," the act of using cell phones to send out lewd pictures of oneself.

   In a survey conducted by an organization that is trying to prevent teen pregnancies, more than 20 percent of teenagers admitted that they have used cell phones or the Internet to send out nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves to others.

   Local experts believe those numbers are accurate. They are surprised how widespread the activity is in Western New York.

   "I won't say it's an epidemic, but it's common," said Leonard Guagliano, a Niagara County Sheriff's investigator who lectures in schools on Internet safety. "Much more common than parents think."

   Does your son or daughter have a cell phone? Have you spoken to them about using it appropriately? Is your school educating students and parents about such issues?

   "Once this stuff gets out there on the 'net, it's out there forever," said Senior Detective James F. Hatch of the Erie County Sheriff's office. "Kids don't realize this."

   -- Dan Herbeck

  
  

Bruno combative in face of indictment

      ALBANY -- The indictment-in-waiting -- which Albany has been anticipating for more than a year -- finally dropped Friday: prosecutors charged former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno with public corruption.

   Ever since Bruno publicly revealed he was the target of an FBI probe in December 2006, the Capitol has been waiting for the shoe to drop against someone who had become the most powerful Republican in the state.

   Now retired, and raking in money as a lobbyist and executive with a politically connected firm, Bruno was his classic self Friday. He was combative, fiery and ready to toss one zinger after another at anyone -- in this case federal prosecutors -- who would say anything against him.

   But while he faces the legal fight of his life, and one that could land him in jail for 20 years if convicted, Bruno still has his Eliot Spitzer ghosts. For more than a year, Bruno and the former governor went head-to-head. Spitzer saw Bruno as his chief obstacle to getting his way, a feeling that drove, his critics said, his administration to begin using the state police to monitor Bruno's state travels.

   So there was Bruno Friday, less than half an hour after appearing in court to face an eight-count indictment for his outside business dealings that made him a rich man, barking at Spitzer as much as at anyone. Was it just lingering anger or part of a legal strategy to suggest that Bruno has been a political target -- first by Spitzer and then by federal prosecutors?

   Either way, it was there. "Whether by former Gov. Spitzer or a politicized U.S. Attorney's office and an overzealous FBI, I have, with their efforts, had every relationship of my life poked, probed and looked over. The former governor's aides, even when they illegally used the state police, could find nothing."

   He even brought up Spitzer not getting charged for patronizing a prostitution ring, a prosecutorial lapse by Bruno's account.

   "One thing I know in my heart, I did nothing wrong," Bruno said.   This time, though, there would be no farewell bus tour for reporters, the likes of which he gave when he retired last July to show off all the hundreds of millions of dollars in state money he spread around the Albany area in and around his district.

   -- Tom Precious

Sad saga of investor's disappearing $720,000

    Richard Piccoli, the 82-year-old Amherst man accused of running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, is portrayed by his lawyers as overwhelmed by his recent arrest. He wants more than anything, they said, to make sure his investors get their money.

   Compare that image to today's story about Ralph Sigl,  a man so incapacitated by drink that he was declared incompetent to handle his finances by a State Supreme Court judge.

   That didn't stop Piccoli, according to Sigl's family, who say he took a lawyer and a bartender to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where Sigl was hospitalized for alcoholism, and had Sigl rewrite the will to his $800,000 estate.

   Piccoli became the new beneficiary and executor of Sigl's estate. He also persuaded Sigl's court-appointed conservator to invest Sigl's money — made in a real estate business — in Piccoli's Gen-See Capital.

   There's less than $80,000 left today in the Sigl estate. And to make matters worse, an attorney who conducted an audit of Sigl's finances told a judge that Piccoli was running a Ponzi scheme. That was in 1998, 10 years before his arrest on charges of running a Ponzi scheme.

   What's wrong with this picture?

   —Michael Beebe

Buffalo reducing number of homicides

   There were 37 homicides in the city of Buffalo in 2008.

   The tragedy is that 37 lives were needlessly ended by other human beings.

   But, on one level, there's lots of reason for hope in that figure.

   That's because it's been slashed in half from the 74 people killed by homicide in Buffalo only two years ago in one of the city's bloodiest years on record. And down again considerably from the 55 homicide victims in 2007.

   Mayor Byron W. Brown and city police brass credit the citizens of the city with making the streets safer by opening up to police and providing them with information that has dramatically helped homicide investigators.

   Officials also point to newfound methods of policing the city, such as surveillance cameras, intensive crackdowns on illegal narcotics, the mayor's Gun Buyback Program along with partnerships between City Hall and neighborhood block groups and anti-violence organizations.

   All told, Buffalo had the lowest 2008 per-capita homicide rate when compared to the cities of Rochester, Syracuse, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

   Are the last two years just a fluke or have we recaptured our moniker as "The City of Good Neighbors?"

  -- T.J. Pignataro

A very avoidable tragedy

   Just what does it take?

   For Christopher Tulumello, crashing a vehicle into a tree last January apparently did not make enough of an impression.

   Neither did his impaired driving conviction.

   Sitting through a victims impact panel designed to impart the dangers of drunken driving apparently did not take.

   A revoked license did not keep him from getting behind the wheel of a pickup truck.

   Now, it's too late.

   Tulumello's mother calls him "a good kid."

   But prosecutors will press vehicular manslaughter, vehicular assault and driving while intoxicated charges against him as a result of his fatal hit-and-run Wednesday night.

   Worse, it's too late for Amanda S. Knowlton, 23, and her son, Isiah, 4, who police say were struck by the pickup as they crossed Main Street at LaSalle Avenue. Knowlton was killed and her son was injured.

   What more can we do to stop the Christopher Tulumellos around us — before it's too late.

   -- Patrick Lakamp

Taser -- lifesaver or sadistic weapon?

   The Taser delivers a 50,000-volt punch of electrical energy, temporarily incapacitating those  who are combative with police while being taken into custody.

   Area police agencies who use Tasers swear by the them, saying they  reduce injuries  not only to  police officers but suspects -- and without any long-term harm.

   However, the weapons have been targeted by negative publicity, most notably the videotaped use of a Taser on a student during a 2007 political speech at the University of Florida, the death of a Polish immigrant in Canada and last September's death of a mentally challenged man in Brooklyn who was shocked by a Taser and fell 10 feet to his death.

   Now, the Erie County Sheriff's Office, Cheektowaga  and Amherst police forces  will either add Tasers to their arsenals in 2009 or are considering it.

   What do you think about police use of Tasers?

-- T.J. Pignataro

Gender bias underscored in teacher sex scandals

   The notorious Mary Kay Letourneau seemed to be the first teacher whose misconduct with a student grabbed the attention of the public and the national media.

   Today, tabloids, TV news programs and -- increasingly -- the Internet are filled with reports of teachers who engage in inappropriate relationships with their students.

   In Western New York alone, former South Buffalo Charter School teacher Cara Dickey, former Buffalo Seminary teacher Malcolm Watson and former Sacred Heart Academy teacher James Van Valkinburgh all have been accused in recent years of having sex with students.

   "It surprises me when they do act in this manner, because they risk a lot, and their chance of getting caught is high," said David T. Cantaffa, associate director of the University at Buffalo Teacher Education Institute.

   What's interesting to note is the difference in the reaction to the cases based on the gender of the accused teacher.

   If it's a case involving a male teacher and an underage female student, the teacher is most often considered a predator, and the student is most often considered a victim.

   If the genders are reversed, the student is considered "lucky," at least by many heterosexual men.

   This attitude comes out frequently in online comments and on Web sites devoted to these cases, where entries are accompanied by smarmy headlines and panting commentary on the accusations against the female teachers.

   Beyond the disparate reaction, some lawyers and psychologists say that women in these and
similar cases are viewed as more sympathetic defendants.

   State crime data show that women in general receive shorter sentences for felony crimes,
including non-violent sexual crimes.

   These cases raise a lot of questions. It seems there are more teacher-student sex scandals being reported today. Do you agree? Why do you think this is, and why do these cases draw such intense coverage?

   Do you think the apparent double standard in how we view -- and treat --  male and female teachers is fair?

-- Stephen T. Watson