Capital New York

Last week, at a breakfast forum at the offices of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance was asked about the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and what his office might do differently in a future case with a similar profile.

Since then, Vance's office has been tasked with investigating a sexual-assault allegation against Greg Kelly, the son of police commissioner Ray Kelly, who handed over the case to the D.A. to avoid any potential conflicts of interest. (Coincidentally, Greg Kelly also had some questions for Vance about Strauss-Kahn recently, in his capacity as an anchor on Fox 5.)

Vance said, in the Strauss-Kahn case, it would have been great to have more time to investigate, and that, in general, he encourages his assistant district attorneys to get the most credible information they can as quickly as they can. He went on:

"And yet fundamentally, there is no single thing that can change the complicated dynamic of determining who's telling the truth between two strangers, neither of whom you've ever met before. This is a combination of just good prosecutorial work, good instincts, but ultimately our office will be driven not by convictions, but by doing what we think is right in every case, wherever it leads us."

Vance said, as he has before, that his office won't be driven by a desire to rack up convictions, and that his office had to react to new facts as they came in from the investigation.

"Ultimately I had to make a decision as to whether we could proceed forward, and as you indicated, ultimately I determined that I was no longer convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that I knew what happened. Not that something didn't happen, but whether we as an office knew beyond a reasonable doubt what happened. And I think that's the standard by which you have to take cases into court. If you as an office don't have that level of confidence, I think it's hard to ask a jury to have that level of confidence at the close of a case."

The questioner, Stroock partner Joel Cohen, asked if he was right in reading that the dismissal motion didn't exactly indicate the Strauss-Kahn hadn't committed the crime.

"What we concluded in our dismissal motion was that we needed to apply the standard of, did we believe, were we convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that we knew what happened," Vance said. "Not that something didn't happen. But did we have that quantum of confidence about what happened. And because we did not, for the reasons we outlined in our motion, I felt that we could not to take the case to the jury."

Reid Pillifant

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