Ex-Gov. David Paterson recounts time in Queens DA’s Office in new memoir
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Former Governor David Paterson. Photo by David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons
By David Brand
The first and only African American to serve as New York’s governor is well known for his rise through Albany politics. David Paterson amassed power as a state senator before getting elected lieutenant governor and taking over as executive when Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a sex work scandal.
But the one-time chair of the New York Democratic committee began his career in Queens, where he served as an assistant district attorney in the early 1980s.
Paterson recounts his experience in the DA’s office in his new memoir “Black Blind & In Charge,” a book that also details standout moments in his political career — including the moment he learned Spitzer was resigning, his work with then-Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins and his exchanges with Donald Trump.
Paterson shared a particularly memorable experience from his time in the Queens Boulevard courthouse during a conversation Thursday with WBAI host Jeff Simmons. In fact, he dedicates an entire chapter to the moment.
On Paterson’s 29th birthday, Forensic Bureau Chief Alfred Annenberg made him try the case of a defendant with a severe mental illness. Paterson tried to get out of the task, his first appearance before a judge, instead favoring a few drinks at a bar to celebrate.
Annenberg would not take no for an answer. He instructed Paterson to tell the judge that the defendant should be sent to a psychiatric facility for examination, something the defense attorney had already agreed to.
“All you have to do is take the case in, make that statement — it’s all set up — and then we’ll go out for drinks for your birthday,” Paterson recalled Annenberg telling him.
The hearing was going well until the defense attorney submitted a letter from the defendant to the judge. Paterson, who is legally blind, demanded to read the letter as well — an order that Annenberg and Queens’ other top prosecutors had drilled into the rookie ADAs.
When the court clerk attempted to withhold the letter, Paterson demanded the document more forcefully.
“Now I knew that I couldn’t read this letter, but I believed that no one in the room really knew how much I saw and how much I didn’t see, so I held it about two inches away from my eyes,
where if I had glasses on I probably could’ve read it just a little but I just started moving the letter as if I was reading it and thinking now I’ve accomplished my purpose,” he writes.
After a few moments, he began to hear snickering behind him. Finally, Paterson’s friend and fellow prosecutor Leonard Livote, now a Queens judge, let him know what was up.
The letter to the judge was actually a piece of paper covered in the letter G, a fact that everyone else in the courtroom could see.
“Rooted to the spot by embarrassment, I fantasized back to the perils of the cowardly lion when he appeared before the Wizard of Oz and became so unraveled that he ran out of the wizard’s chambers and dived through a window,” Paterson wrote. “I would have gladly done that if such an egress were available. I came out of the courtroom trembling in fear at what Annenberg was going to say.”
“But, after putting his arm around me, Annenberg said, ‘Listen, I sent you in there to get a defendant sent to a psychiatric facility and that got done, now let’s go have drinks.’”
