Six lawyers representing sex offenders are trying to hit up New York taxpayers for nearly $3.1 million in legal fees. They must have gotten the idea from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The lawyers represented convicted sex felons who sued because they’d been locked in psychiatric hospitals without hearings after their prison sentences ended.
Then-Gov. George Pataki took this action after the Silver-controlled Assembly six times refused to pass a bill extending civil-confinement laws to sex predators.
The judge in this suit ruled that Pataki’s action was illegal. But a jury awarded the plaintiffs — one of whom admitted to having molested 23 girls, including his own daughter — just $1 each in actual damages.
Still, as the legally “prevailing party,” the lawyers can seek to have the other side pick up the tab. Just to show what nice guys they are, they claim the $3.1 million they want is 15 percent off their regular rates.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman plans to fight any fees from public funds. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he can’t do the same for the taxpayer dollars going to the top-flight private lawyer now representing Shelly Silver in a lawsuit brought by two women who say they were sexually harassed by then-Assemblyman Vito Lopez. This is on top of the $103,000 in taxpayer funds Silver used to cover up an earlier Lopez sex scandal.
The iron rule of New York seems to be that no matter who’s guilty of sexual offenses, it’s the innocent taxpayer who gets shafted.