Jesse Friedman gets day in court to clear sex crimes

After pleading guilty and spending 13 years in prison, Jesse Friedman will get his day in court to explore the fairness of his trial.

BY ANN GIVENS AND ALFONSO A. CASTILLO | ann.givens@newsday.com
alfonso.castillo@newsday.com

11:41 PM EDT, July 23, 2007

More than 18 years after he pleaded guilty to child sex crimes he now says he didn't commit, Jesse Friedman says he has a glimmer of hope in his quest to clear his name.

Friedman, 38, the former Great Neck resident who was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Capturing the Friedmans," has been granted a federal court hearing to examine whether prosecutors wrongfully withheld evidence that police hypnotized at least one of his young accusers. The hearing likely will take place in September, attorneys said.

"I spent 13 years sitting in prison, realizing I never got a fair day in court," said Friedman, who was paroled in 2001 and completed an additional 5-year probation sentence in December. "Now, I'm going to get a fair hearing. I never really had that opportunity before."

In 1987, Friedman and his father, Arnold, then 56, were arrested on charges that they sodomized more than a dozen students during computer classes in the basement of the Friedmans' Great Neck home.

Both Friedmans pleaded guilty to the charges. The elder Friedman committed suicide in 1995 while serving a sentence of 10 to 30 years in prison.

Jesse Friedman launched a drive to overturn his conviction following the 2003 release of the documentary, which raised issues with the police investigation and prosecution of his case.

In numerous appeals, Friedman has argued that he deserves a new trial because he discovered new evidence that police pressured, manipulated and hypnotized witnesses into recalling instances of abuse that never took place. Time after time, courts dismissed Friedman's applications.

Friedman's likely last resort came in June 2006, when his Manhattan attorneys, Ron Kuby and David Pressman, asked a federal court to hear the case on the grounds that prosecutors violated his constitutional right to due process.

In a decision dated July 20, U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert rejected much of his application but agreed to grant a hearing to examine whether prosecutors withheld "exculpatory" evidence from Friedman's attorneys "regarding children being hypnotized before they informed police that they were sexually abused."

Judith Sternberg, who is handling the case for the Nassau County district attorney's office, disputed the notion that one accuser, identified in the film as Gregory Doe, only recalled his abuse after being hypnotized by a therapist.

"He [Gregory Doe] knew what happened immediately. Not months later in therapy," Sternberg said Monday.

In a Newsday interview after the documentary was released, "Gregory Doe" said his therapist led him through a relaxation exercise to help him open up about what happened. But, he said, that was long after he had made a statement to police.

Although Friedman has completed his sentence, he said the upcoming hearing could lead to his sexual offender designation being removed, and more importantly, set the record straight.

"People are always asking me ... 'What are you hoping to gain?'" Friedman said. "It's not about gain. It's about having the truth finally said."