Bernie Kerik (Robert Kalfus)
HUGS ALL AROUND: Peter DiTommaso celebrates with his family yesterday after a Bronx judge declined to send him to prison for perjury for saying that he didn’t pay for renovations to pal Bernie Kerik’s (inset) home. (
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Former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik’s pal got a pass on prison yesterday — but he was outed for stealing “a large zucchini” 41 years ago.
New Jersey businessman Peter DiTommaso’s childhood vegetable larceny was revealed in letters his friends wrote to a judge, asking for leniency in his perjury conviction.
The New York Law Enforcement Foundation’s executive vice president wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter saying he met DiTommaso, then 10 years old, as a “result of him procuring a very large zucchini from my father’s garden” on Staten Island.
DiTomasso’s father, an NYPD cop, asked where he got the vegetable, read the letter from Sal Giardina.
DiTommaso confessed, and his dad marched him right back to the Giardina home to surrender it and apologize, the letter said.
“Over the years, I have observed how Peter developed into the man he is today,” Giardina wrote.
“Peter is the perfect example of a very good man making a poor decision. I know Peter feels terrible about making a grave mistake,” it added, referring to DiTommaso’s conviction of falsely telling a grand jury that his company didn’t pay for $165,000 in renovations to Kerik’s Riverdale apartment.
“This whole process has been very humbling for me,” DiTommaso told Bronx Supreme Court Judge John Carter. “It’s been very tough on me. I have lived my life respectfully and gracefully and my parents raised me to be law-abiding.”
DiTommaso, now 51, wept for joy after receiving a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of five years’ probation and 1,500 hours of community service.
He faced five years in the slammer.
Friends, family, and business partners wrote 80 letters on DiTomasso’s behalf, including former New Jersey state Senate President Ray Bateman, Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle and retired Department of Homeland Security special agent Peter Persico.
Defense lawyer Michael Marinaccio called it an “outpouring of love and praise.” Carter said that despite his claim that he was not guilty of perjury, “there’s not a doubt in my mind, not even the tiniest doubt, that you lied in the grand jury.”
But Carter noted jurors had acquitted DiTommaso’s brother, Frank, “under the exact same circumstances” in the Kerik case, and pointed to Peter’s charitable activity.
“What is an appropriate sentence?” Carter asked. “I don’t believe, in this instance, sitting in a prison cell is what’s called for.”