Uptown Radio

Queens District Attorney's Office. Photo: Mackenzie Issler.

The New York State appellate court is now hearing three cases of people who say they were questioned without a lawyer by the Queens District Attorney.

The plaintiffs were all suspects in custody for various crimes and were waiting in the courthouse, expecting to go before a judge.

Instead, they were brought into an interrogation room, asked a series of questions about their cases, and given the opportunity to speak about their alleged crimes.

The New York Civil Liberties Union says this practice is both unconstitutional and unethical because it turns up evidence that could be used against suspects in court.

The NYCLU claims the Queens DA has compromised the rights of perhaps thousands of suspects since it started this practice in 2007.

Parties in the three cases now before the appellate court can’t talk to the press. But people whose cases are closed can.

Deonte Jones : I was just like real uncomfortable with the whole situation.

That’s Deonte Jones, who was cleared of robbery charges this week.

On July 12th of last year, he was taken out of a holding cell in the courthouse by Mary Picone. Jones thought she was his public defender.

She quickly explained she was an investigator from the district attorney’s office, and took him to a room, where an assistant DA joined them.

Door Sound have a seat in that chair … we are going to explain to you what you are doing here …

In the videotape of the interrogation the camera focuses mainly on Jones, who’s wearing a blue t-shirt and a worried look as Picone begins.

Investigator: … okay today is July 12th, 2011, it is 6:56 p.m. We are present in the interview room of the Queens County District Attorney’s Office Central Booking Room.

She’s working from a script, meant for all kinds of suspects. It includes a long list of options for defendants about what the DA’s office can do on their behalf, like investigating alibis and other information.

Investigator: If your version of what happened is different than what we have been told, this is an opportunity if you so choose, to tell us your story. If there something that you like us to investigate regarding this incident, if you tell me about, we will look into it.

Jones is read his rights and agrees to talk.

This week —with his lawyer present — Jones watched the nine minute video of his interrogation.

Deonte: I felt like they tried to ask me the same question over and over again to see if I would change my answer.

On the tape, Jones says he saw a fight and walked away and he sticks to this, even after several minutes of intense questioning.

But other defendants have run into trouble, says New York Civil Liberties Union attorney Taylor Pendergrass. He says once the suspects are brought into the interrogation room, they are asked questions they think could clear them.

Pendergrass says the opposite is true.

Pendergrass: The District Attorney is strategically and, I would say cynically, exploiting this window of time just before suspects are going to be appointed criminal defense attorneys in order to take this uncounseled interrogations.

Pendergrass says the questioning violates a suspect’s right to get in front of a judge quickly. He explains that’s part of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. And Pendergrass says there’s something else.

Pendergrass: The assistant district attorney reads this very misleading script to suspects that makes it seems like it is in their best interests, the suspects best interests, completely violates the Fifth Amendment Right not to self incriminate.

A spokeswoman for the Queens County District Attorney’s office declined to comment for the story, saying the city doesn’t talk about pending litigation.

She also declined to speak generally about how the DA questions defendants.

Pendergrass maintains the Queen’s DA has said in court that it uses these interrogations to exonerate people and dismiss cases.

Deonte Jones’ lawyer, Michael Siff, says the questioning confuses suspects about who is prosecuting them and who is defending them.

Siffe: I think that there are major issues because you have a lawyer that is there saying that they are there to help the defendant so the defendant is putting their trust in attorney, who’s putting forth promises they may not be able to keep.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a friend of the court brief in the three cases now before the New York appellate court. It asks to suppress evidence gathered during the DA’s interrogations. But the organization’s main goal is to have the court call for the DA to stop the interrogations all together.

Pendergrass says there could a decision by the end of this year.

Mackenzie Issler, Columbia Radio News.

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New research says those drawn out ‘awws” and tough-talkin’ inflections of the New York accent may soon be something you hear only in the movies. While you may still hear variations of that accent across the five boroughs, that ‘New Yawk” drawl, like so many regional accents, is changing.

BY PAUL SMITH

Drop your bagel. Spit out your coffee. New research shows the New York accent– with its drawn out AWWWS and tough talkin’ associations – may soon be something we mostly hear in the movies. You can still hear variations of the accent across the five boroughs, but like so many American regional accents, it’s changing.

You can spot New Yorkers on screen right away: the accent is part of their characters.  Like Olympia doo-caucus in 1988’s Working Girl. 25 years ago, Doo-caucus’s character was already a throwback, and that’s even truer now, says. Linguist Kara Becker, of Reed College. She spent the last couple of years in New York listening to how people talk. Becker focused her research between 14th Street and the Brooklyn Bridge.

“What we found on the lower east side was that a few features we associate with the New York City accent are not being used by groups we expect to be using them,” says Becker.

She’s talking about people under the age of 50. She says their vowel sounds are different from those of older generations.

Becker traces this shift to the World War II era. Before then, lots of people here spoke with a kind of New York accent—including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was born well-to-do in the Hudson Valley, and had what was considered an upper class accent. Becker says that after the war, the prestige of the New York accent began to wane. It became associated with working class people in popular culture. That’s when mass self-consciousness kicked in.

“It’s a place where we say there’s a high amount of linguistic insecurity meaning there are speakers who have New York accents who might seek out a dialect coach or make a real effort to lose their accent,” says Becker.

That’s what Queens native Jo Ann Smith did in the 70s, when she landed a job as a secretary at NBC. Soon after she got there, she had a heart to heart with her boss.

“I told her I was insecure that I didn’t have this college degree,” says Smith. “She said, ‘Oh I don’t have a college degree either. The most important thing for you to do is to read the New York Times every day and you must get rid of that New York accent. If you want to get ahead, you just got to get rid of it.’”

She took accent reduction lessons and her Queens drawl vanished. Back then she paid $20 per class, the equivalent of nearly $100 today.

Voice coaching is still a lucrative business, says Patricia Fletcher, who teaches from her home studio on the Upper East Side. Go see her for an accent exorcism and she’ll probably begin by working on your jaw.

Fletcher has a business to run, but she says eliminating an intrinsic part of someone’s personality can be heartbreaking.

She’s been a coach for so long, she can often tell what your voice sounds like just by staring at you on the subway. She says native New Yorkers have muscular jaws, but they’re active speakers in general. “The kind of stereotypical picture we have is a stereotype for a reason,” says Fletcher. “So, often the talking with their hands and being very muscular in the delivery.”

Lots of Fletcher’s clients are actors who want to sound like New Yorkers. Some of them already are. Once, actress Drea de Matteo, a Queens native, came to Fletcher to shake off her accent. But when she got cast as Adriana in the Sopranos, Fletcher helped her find it again.

Cristina Ojeda and Monica Alcota eating dinner at their home in Queens. Photo by Juliana Schatz

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By Juliana Schatz

Cristina Ojeda and Monica Alcota have been married six months and are giggly and affectionate. Ojeda, who is from California, speaks English. Alcota, an Argentina native, speaks mostly in Spanish. They often finish each other’s sentences.  Even when they talk about their wedding.

“I had never seen her so nervous. Nunca. She was shaking. She couldn’t put the ring on,” said Ojeda.

Alcota left Argentina on a tourist visa ten years ago, fleeing what she called daily harassment.

“You couldn’t live a normal life. You had to pretend you were someone you weren’t,” said Alcota.

She says you couldn’t live a normal life there. That you had to pretend you were someone you weren’t.

After the couple met, they commuted by bus between New York and Buffalo, where Ojeda was in graduate school. Alcota, who works in antique restoration, kept a low profile. But on their way back to New York City one night, immigration officers boarded the bus.

They arrested Alcota and took her to a detention center in Niagara Falls. Then, Ojeda was sent home.

“I came back on the bus and we just drove. I had to leave her there. I mean it was so hard because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” said Ojeda.

Eventually, Alcota was held in a facility in Elizabeth, N.J.

“You had to shower and everyone could see you. You couldn’t go to the bathroom… It was the most horrible thing that has happened to me in my life,” said Alcota.

She calls it was the worst thing that could have happened to her. She and other detainees ate, slept and showered in the same rooms.

Right after she was released, three months later, the couple went to Connecticut, one of five states in the U.S. that permit same sex marriages. After the wedding, Ojeda bid for Alcota’s I-130 form – her green card.

“But it’s going to be denied because DOMA because marriage has to be between a man and a woman,” said Ojeda.

The couple has an attorney who is trying to delay proceedings until the government decides what to do about DOMA.

But legal representation might not help them, says Arthur Leonard, a professor at New York Law School.

“There is a lot of suspicion that attaches to of people who marry under these circumstances, because the might be marriages of conveniences for the purpose of giving the foreign bliss a place to stay,” said Leonard.

Leonard, who founded the Gay and Lesbian Bar Association over thirty years ago says even though Alcota felt persecuted in Argentina, the couple will not have a strong case before an immigration judge.

The only way they would, he says, is if their marriage could be recognized federally.

“If a same sex couple is legally married they should be entitled to the same treatment as different sex couples who is legally married for purposes of the immigration laws,” said Lenoard.

Monica Alcota and Cristina Ojeda know that’s far off, but are optimistic and looking forward to their second deportation hearing in two weeks.



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A tense silence fell across Steinway Street in Little Egypt as the hour of President Hosni Mubarak’s speech approached. El Karnak restaurant was empty. It’s manager, Zaid Aboraz, was certain the rumors that Mubarak would leave were true.

“Sooner or later it will happen,” he said. “So he’s better off now than tomorrow, or next week.”

Ali Lotfi, the owner of a grocery store down the street, was not so sure.

“He’s an army man,” Lotfi said. “He’s not going to leave like that easy. He will stay until his period is finished.”

Minutes before Mubarak was set to speak, two waitresses at El-Rashwah, another quiet restaurant, were brimming with excitement. They preferred not to be named, but were planning a party in honor of the expected resignation. They promised to talk as soon as the speech was over. But as Mubarak spoke, they began to cry. They declined to be interviewed, saying they were afraid they’d be blacklisted and arrested if they returned to Egypt.

Similar fears may push many Egyptians to flee their country, but that may not make them refugees in the eyes of the United States. Tim Irwin is a spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency.

“If the reason they left is because they didn’t want to stay in a country where these protests are going on, that may prove a difficult refugee claim,” Irwin said. “But if they said they left and they could prove that they had a justifiable fear of persecution based on one of the number of criteria that the authorities use, it might be that their case could be upheld.”

Since the protests began, large groups of Egyptian men have been gathering in the hookah bars and restaurants that line Steinway Street. They’ve been filling rooms with sweet-smelling smoke and heated discussion. Muhamed al-Zaedi is an IT consultant who came here in 2007. He’s 24 – which means that by the time he was born, Mubarak had been in power for six years already.

“I opened my eyes and found one president: Mubarak,” he said. “This is what’s wrong. You know, you can give, but you cannot give for 30 years.”

Steinway Street’s Egyptians say they will not be happy with a leadership that continues Mubarak’s policies. Even amid the joy, they are suspicious that remnants of his administration will persist.