Veteran reporter Ralph
Cipriano at Bigtrial.net offers a piece on his meeting Seth Williams, the former Philadelphia DA recently convicted of corruption charges.
When you cover a trial, you
meet everybody in the men's room.
The prosecutors, the defense
lawyers. Even the defendant, Rufus Seth Williams.
Talk about an uncomfortable
situation. There I was face to face at the sink with the guy I've been ripping
for the past five years.
But to my surprise, he actually wanted to
talk.
It hasn't been much of a
relationship.
On my end, as I mentioned
previously, I just rip the D.A. for the shocking things he's done, things that
nobody else in the media would call him on.
I've blasted him for
publishing an irresponsible grand jury report about the Catholic Church that
was riddled with more than 20 factual errors; a bogus grand jury report that
passed off as gospel the fraudulent fables told by "Billy Doe."
I've taken him to task for
trashing the reputations of six narcotics officers without a shred of proof.
And for turning loose more than 800 drug dealers arrested by those same cops,
similarly without any evidence of police misconduct.
I've castigated him for not
prosecuting perpetrators of domestic abuse, because it might lower his
conviction rate at election time.
And his response for five
straight years has been remarkably consistent -- he just stonewalls me.
Silence, usually from him,
and often from his spokespeople.
When I did run into the D.A.
at press conferences, he would usually say hello to many other reporters by
name, and then he would make a point of stiffing me.
So. when I was covering his
political corruption trial, the day after I called him a sleaze ball and a shakedown
artist in print, when I ran into him in the men's room, I did not expect Rufus
Seth Williams to thank me for my work.
But he did.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
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