Articles

Profile of the Hon. Gregory L. Lasak

by Michael Goldsmith

Newly elected Supreme Court Justice Gregory L Lasak is a livelong resident of Queens County, having attended St. Sebastian’s School in Woodside, Holy Cross High School and Queens College. A June 1977 graduate of New York Law School, he began his career in the Queens District Attorney’s Office in March of 1978. Since June of 1991, he has served as the Executive Assistant District Attorney in charge of the Major Crimes Division. In that position, he has supervised the investigation and prosecution of all homicides, domestic violence, sex crimes, career criminals and other major felonies in Queens County.

For the seven years prior to that, he served as the Chief of the Homicide, Major Offense and Supreme Court Trial Bureaus.

During his prosecutorial career, Judge Lesak has supervised the investigations of over 3,000 homicides and other unnatural deaths including many high profile cases, including the murders of Detective Anthony Vendetti, Police Officer Scott Gedell, Police Officer George Sheu, Police Officer Charles Davis and the “Zodiac Killer.” He also headed the investigation of the 106^th Precinct “stun gun” case and the Howard Beach racial attack. He has supervised the trials of over 1,000 homicides, sex crimes, and other violent felonies.

As a prosecutor, Justice Lesak has personally convicted every defendant he has taken to trial charged with a felony, including more than 20 defendants indicted on murder charges, including two for the April 16, 1981 assassination of Police Officer John Scarangella and the wounding of his partner, Police Officer Richard Rainey, and another for the rape/murder of 17 year old honor student Laura Evelyn, who was thrown off the roof of a building in Rochdale Village in 1982. Most recently, he convicted the three defendants responsible for the 1995 College Point massacre, the largest mass murder in Queens history, where six people were tied up and systematically slaughtered. He has been responsible for the prosecution of every case brought under the death penalty statute since its enactment in 1995, including the Wendys’ massacre.

Justice Lesak was recently profiled in the New York Newsday, and in an article in the New York Time, written by Marcus Baram.

As quoted in the Times article, [Justice] “ Lasak, who is Polish American, grew up in Woodside, Queens, when it was a mostly Irish neighborhood. The son of a mechanic in the textile industry and a homemaker, he married his high-school sweetheart, Patti Owens, whose father, Curley, was one of the best loved Irish bartenders in the area. His daughter and two sons played sports at St. Sebastian, the same Catholic grammar school that he attended.”

““I love Queens,” he said as he sat in one of his favorite neighborhood haunts, Donovan’s bar on Roosevelt Avenue. “My friends joke that I vacation in Breezy Point.”“

”Early exposure to crime helped influence [Justice] Lasak’s choice of career. “That was the 60's and drugs were starting to come into the neighborhood,” he remembered. “I saw a number of my friends becoming thieves and losing their lives to heroine or speed. That didn’t happen to me. My father was pretty tough.”“

”[Justice] Lasak formed a special bond as well with Joe Kiernan, a police detective and the father of a friend, but it may have been in delivering newspapers that he found the inspiration for his future. “I saw this story in The Long Island Star Journal about the Alice Crimmins case, this cocktail waitress charged with killing her two kids, and I was fascinated,” Mr. Lasak said.”

“With a legal career in mind, he attended Queens College and New York Law School. On March 3, 1978, [the new attorney] became an assistant district attorney. “It was a snowy morning,” he said. “I’ll never forget it, taking the F train with my mother and getting hired with six other A.D.A.’s.”“

The new ADA was immediately thrown into the thick of things, and began a stellar career of trying high profile homicide cases.

As quoted in the Times article, “A few weeks ago, as [Justice] Lasak was packing up for his move to the courthouse, he felt a story coming on He tells it so vividly, with so many specifics, you feel as if you are right there at the crime scene.”

““In December 1980, we had a pair of young guys, Eddie Frawley and Arthur Damers, who were pulling stickup jobs at bars all over Queens,” Mr. Lasak began. “They would walk in, order a few drinks and stick up the bar. They were on a spree, and they always did the same thing.”

““One night, December 19, they go to the 3'Os in Flushing and John’s Bar in Middle Village with the exact same routine. They walked in, had a few Jack Daniels and gin and tonics, and pulled out their guns, a 35 caliber automatic and a fake pistol,” and the bartender’s head. After that, they headed over to the Echo Lounge in Corona, which I’m told was a wiseguy bar, but most of them had already left.”“

”After more drinks, [Justice] Lasak said, the two stuck up that tavern too. The bartender Allo got mad, but then something remarkable happened. “Frawley shoots him right in the forehead, but he shot at an angle and the .25 was a light bullet. Allo had a hard head, that bullet must have just bounded off, because he was fine, just blood all over his face.”

“Now, by this time, they’re pretty drunk. They head owner to Sesame Street Inn in Woodside, It’s about 4 a.m., the bartender is about to close for the night but he lets them in. A bus driver who just got engaged, named Kevin, is sitting there and sleeping at the bar, when they stick up the place and make everyone go on the floor. Someone yells, “Kevin get on the floor,” and the poor guy looks up, reaches in his pocket for a $5, and Frawley thinks he’s reaching for a piece, shoots him in the chest. After that, there were undercovers all over the area, in every bar. These guys take a few weeks off”. Finally on January 2, the spree ended. “They pull a job at Slattery’s Bar in Woodside, and they make everyone go in the bathroom, but one of the customers that night was an off duty cop named Patrick Ward. He decides to fight back, kicks the door open and pulls his gun, shooting Frawley in the shoulder, who returns fire and hits Ward in the knee.”

“They take off and later we get a tip that Frawley’s on a TWA flight to Indiana. So the cops race over to LaGuardia, where they had to race onto the runway. It was like pulling over a plane. The busted both guys. On their flight manifests, they had a little fun with Mayor Koch. They put down I. Koch and A. Koch.”

“The two were convicted of second-degree murder, Eddie Frawley who had had the real gun got 32 years to life and Arthur Damers, who had the fake one, got l5 to life.”

By 1984, at the age of 30, Judge Lasak was named chief of the homicide bureau, where he was charged with some of the most high profile homicide cases in Queens County history.

As quoted in the Newsday article, “On April 16, 1981 in St. Albans, Officers John Scarangella 42 and Richard Rainey, 32, stopped a van fitting the description of one used in a string of burglaries. Before the officers could get out of their patrol car, two men jumped from the van and fired about 30 shots at them. Scarangella, a father of four, was wounded and was in a coma for two weeks before dying on May 1, 1981. Rainey was wounded eight times. He survived by his injuries ended his police career.”

“Police charged two ex-Black Panthers, Anthony LaBorde, who later changed his name to Abdul Majid, and James Dixon York, who later changed his name to Basheer Hameed, in the shootings. The first two trials ended in hung juries, Lasak was then called on to prosecute the case.”

““As a district attorney, that’s the most important case you could ask for,” [Justice] Lasak said. “It was an outright execution of a uniformed police officer in a marked police car in broad daylight. It was a brazen act of cowardice.”“

”The trial started in March 1986 and provided a high courtroom drama. The defendants were represented by a prosecutor’s worst nightmare, William Kunstler. “It was a war, a three month war,” [Justice] Lasak recalls. “Kunstler was his usual energetic self. He was very charming in front of a jury, and he was very tenacious for his clients’ interest. In short, he was a pain in the butt.”“

”The suspects’ supporters and Scarangella’s family members and cops filled the courtroom. “You could cut the air in the courtroom with a knife half the time” [Justice] Lasak said.” After a long and heated trial, the jury came back with two guilty verdicts.

“[Justice] Lesak has also earned the respect of some defense lawyers. “Greg is one of the few prosecutors who genuinely loses sleep over the prospect of convicting an innocent person,” said Ronald L. Kuby, a long time partner of ... William Kunstler.”

“In 2001, while preparing to prosecute the murders of 5 people killed inside a Wendy’s restaurant on May 24, 2003, Lasak felt a pain in his chest. If it was up to him, he would have ignored it. But at his brother’s insistence, he went to the hospital and found out he needed a heart operation.” The operation and recovery from it knocked him off the case.”

“In recent years, Lasak’s role has expanded into territory where few career prosecutors venture. He estimates that in the past five years, he has helped get released about 20 men wrongfully imprisoned, indicted or arrested.”

“He personally corrected more injustices than any prosecutor I can recall offhand,” said Barry Scheck, a defense attorney who founded the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully incarcerated. “On his own, or even at the request of defense attorneys, if he thought there was a wrongful conviction, he personally investigated it, and he got it right.”

“Innocent men Lasak won freedom for recently include Lee Long, who served six years for a rape in Jackson Heights and Lambert Charles, who confessed to a murder in Jackson Heights after being threatened by a drug gang.”

“The satisfaction of obtaining justice for someone who has been sitting in a jail for a crime they didn’t commit is just as great or even greater, in some respects, than convicting a guilty person.” Lasak said. “It’s not a popular mission for prosecutors, which I feel is unfortunate because it should by part of the job.”“

Justice Lesak is looking forward the newest chapter in his distinguished career. As he was quoted in Newsday, “I had a great run [at the D.A.’s office]. “Some people can’t make decisions. I can make decisions. I feel that will help make the transition to the bench very easy. I don’t think there will be any decisions that are tougher than the ones I’ve had to make.”