The shooting of a Huntington Station cabdriver by an off-duty Nassau County police officer in a fit of alcohol-fueled road rage has been dogged for more than a decade by evidence of cover-ups and the wrongful arrest of an innocent man.
Former Nassau Officer Anthony DiLeonardo opened fire on cabbie Thomas Moroughan after a night of dinner and drinking in 2011. He wounded Moroughan twice, pummeled him with a pistol, breaking his nose, and faced possible arrest on a first-degree assault charge.
Instead, Suffolk County Police Department investigators initially accepted DiLeonardos account that he had shot Moroughan in self-defense. They charged Moroughan with assault after detectives took a hospital-bed statement in which Moroughan purportedly exonerated DiLeonardo and incriminated himself. At the time, doctors had administered narcotic medications to dull Moroughans pain.
The shooting entangled the internal affairs bureaus of Long Islands neighboring county forces in separate investigations. After more than three years, the Nassau department dismissed DiLeonardo. Separately, it punished fellow Officer Edward Bienz, who was at the scene of the shooting after drinking with DiLeonardo, with the loss of 20 days pay.
Because Suffolk was the site of the shooting, Suffolk police were responsible first for determining whether a crime had been committed and, if so, by whom. After the district attorneys office dropped all charges against Moroughan, Suffolk internal affairs examined the circumstances surrounding the cabdrivers arrest.
Newsdays look into how Long Islands two county police forces have policed themselves uncovered the outcome of Suffolks internal investigation, including how ranking members of the department brought the case to a close under the near total secrecy that was imposed by law on police discipline.
Newsday found that: The Suffolk County Police Department ruled there was no misconduct by any member of the force and ordered no discipline. In finding no fault, then-Commissioner Edward Webber overruled the departments internal affairs chief, who had called for filing misconduct charges against a sergeant and a detective sergeant. Former Chief of Detectives William Madigan pressed internal affairs commanding officer Michael Caldarelli to delete evidence from a report that Caldarelli considered crucial to supporting the charges, including accounts that DiLeonardo smelled of alcohol and that Moroughan had been given morphine, according to notes handwritten by Madigan. Madigan pushed Caldarelli to change his report at a meeting also attended by police Capt. Alexander Crawford, an attorney who is the departments chief legal officer, who also had served as a trustee of the Superior Officers Association, the union representing the sergeant and detective sergeant. Caldarelli rebuffed Madigan and Crawford, notifying Webber in a memo that he refused to make the deletions they requested. The department permitted a second trustee of the Superior Officers Association, a sergeant, to play a key role in recommending whether or not to file charges against any officers involved in investigating the shooting at a time when the sergeant was both a union member and a union trustee. Moroughan, then 26, had been shot twice and had his nose broken as DiLeonardo tried to rip him from the cab. Moroughan had spent the night at the hospital calling out repeatedly for his lawyer, he said, before Suffolk police arrested him. He faced seven years in prison on the charges that included assaulting an officer, which were later dropped.
At Newsdays request, five experts in criminal law or police misconduct reviewed a detailed account of the case. Newsday based the account on internal affairs documents obtained from court files and confidential sources, official public statements and Caldarellis recollections of an internal affairs tenure that he described as Kafkaesque. The Suffolk police department denied a Newsday Freedom of Information Law request for internal affairs documents related to the case. ... Unanimously, the five experts concluded that based on the evidence provided by Newsday Moroughan had not committed a crime; that Suffolk police had wrongfully arrested him; that DiLeonardo had shot Moroughan without legal justification; and that Suffolk police could have arrested DiLeonardo.
Some also concluded that Suffolk police used Moroughans arrest to cover up DiLeonardos crime; that former Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota reinforced the apparent cover-up by declining to conduct a grand jury investigation; and that Suffolk police leadership completed the cover-up by overruling its internal affairs chief and taking no action against detectives and supervisors who participated in Moroughans arrest.
Its a cover-up of a cover-up, said Bennett Gershman, the Pace University law professor, adding:
They dont want the truth to come out, because if the truth comes out, its very embarrassing. And maybe even worse, its criminal.