(Left: Adam Bradley leaving court after being convicted on five counts. Right: The Bradley family.) 

Back in April, I wrote about the mayor of White Plains, N.Y., Adam Bradley, being arrested for domestic violence.  Yesterday, Judge Susan Capeci convicted him on five of the nine counts.  Sentencing will be on March 17.

Since none of the convictions rise above a misdemeanor, Bradley is not compelled by law to step down from office and, despite calls from several fellow Democrats on the City Council for him to resign, Bradley insists he will not do so.  By law, only the governor of the state can force him from office, and since the current Governor, David Paterson, notoriously interfered with a domestic violence investigation involving his friend, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Bradley was charged with throwing hot tea on his wife Fumiko on January 11, slamming a door on her fingers twice on February 28, and then violating an order of protection by harassing her, even after she had indicated that she wanted the charges dropped.  Emails sent from Fumiko to a friend indicated a history of verbal abuse; at one point, he told her that “she should go hang herself.” Testimony in the trial revealed that Bradley had a history of volatile relationships, calling the police on two previous girlfriends in order to have them evicted.

In my original post, I wrote about the emails:

They depict a toxic relationship in which Bradley constantly humiliated and belittled his wife verbally in front of their kids, pushed her out of bed, used her financial dependence on him as a weapon, made her cook food which he immediately tossed in the garbage, told her she was less important than his job, and may have had an inappropriate relationship with the au pair (in one email, she describes him starting to go join the au pair in the shower).   

It’s hard to judge testimony without being in the courtroom, so my knowledge is based solely on the reporting of The Journal News, which today published a strong editorial calling for Bradley to resign.  It was notable that the paper’s coverage evolved from a “just the facts ma’am” approach in the early days of testimony to a harder-edged slant during the defense phase, as if the reporter heard the defense presentation and thought, “Is that all you’ve got?”  It was their reporter, Ben Rubin, who noted the unlikeliness of the normally brash and assertive Bradley playing a meek milquetoast on the witness stand, trying to convince the judge that he was the calm victim of a temperamental spouse and that, like Norman Bates at the end of Psycho, wouldn’t hurt a fly.  

The defense team’s first major decision was to waive Bradley’s right to a jury trial and have the case decided by Judge Capeci.  I wondered why Bradley chose this rarely-seen maneuver – until I learned that Capeci was also a Democrat.  I suspect Bradley felt he stood a better chance with one person with political ties rather than twelve independent citizens.  If so, he was wrong.

Although Fumiko Bradley appeared to stand up well to a tough cross-examination after testifying to her version of the abuse, I felt that the most important witness for the prosecution was Alexandra Hofgaertner, Fumiko’s friend and neighbor, to whom Fumiko confided the details of the abuse through conversation and emails.  It was Hofgaertner’s leaking of Fumiko’s emails to the press on March 25 that revealed the details of what went on in the Bradley home.

Because Hofgaertner was the one witness who took the case above a “he said, she said,” the defense tried to discredit her by depicting Hofgaertner’s boyfriend, John DiBlasi, as an ex-friend of Bradley’s who was disgruntled about not being named Chief of Staff.  Apparently, the judge was not persuaded.

Bradley’s defense witnesses, according to Assistant D.A. Audrey Stone, consisted mostly of Bradley’s friends and political connections.  The one exception was the Bradleys’ former au pair, Yuko Watanabe, who was suspiciously hidden from the police and the prosecutor’s office for eight months by friends of Bradley, with whom she stayed rent-free.  (I didn’t think you were allowed to hide witnesses!)

I was quite surprised when Bradley himself took the witness stand.  However, Bennett Gershman, a Pace Law School professor who attended much of the trial, said Bradley’s attorneys had no choice because none of the other defense witnesses had put a dent in the evidence. "The only way they could create reasonable doubt was by having Bradley testify."

I believe Bradley’s testimony opened up a can of worms for their case.  As the mayor tried to convince the judge that his wife was the dangerous one, the prosecutors hammered him, asking him why, if she was so dangerous, he had never called the police on her when, in fact, he had called the police on two previous girlfriends.  Unless Bradley is the world’s worst judge of women, his history of volatile relationships would appear to be a red flag about Bradley’s own character. 

In addition, as The Journal News noted:

The mayor described his wife as someone who went through bouts of rage and depression, and needed intensive therapy or medication.

No evidence was presented to show she was emotionally unstable, took medication or went to therapy.

Although he could be sentenced to up to one year in prison – and I’d like to see him get some jail time as a lesson that even powerful men are not above the law - most legal experts believe he will receive no jail time.  The question then is why he forced the case to a lengthy trial – testimony took ten days, rare for a case of this nature – when he could have accepted a plea bargain that would also have entailed no jail time.  My suspicion is that, beyond hoping for an outright acquittal, Bradley believed that even a small admission of guilt would have been deadlier to his political career than a guilty verdict that could be appealed and disputed.

At times, it appeared that Bradley’s attorneys were less interested in convincing the judge than in persuading the voters of White Plains.  They insisted that their case required the testimony of both Adam’s and Fumiko’s marriage counselors when it seemed highly unlikely that the judge would allow it due to confidentiality privileges (in fact, the judge did not allow it).  Later, they made a big deal about the mayor’s decision not to have his youngest daughter take the witness stand, claiming he would rather go to jail than expose his child to this.  My belief is that was intended to allow some plausibility in case of a guilty verdict (“Oh, he would have been acquitted if he hadn’t been nobly defending his child.”) 

In the end, though, we are left with a man who abused his wife and, when caught, chose to blame the victim by attacking her character in order to save his own political career.  His case is a reminder that domestic violence crosses all demographics, all political parties and all economic classes.  Hopefully, the verdict is a sign that the legal system is beginning to treat these crimes more seriously.

And hopefully the verdict will leave a permanent mark on Bradley’s political ambitions.   As Journal News columnist Phil Reisman wrote this morning about Bradley’s demeanor in court:

Bradley had the desperate look of a calf who was about to be roped and tied.  On Thursday, he was branded.