COURIER L M BR B G IFE, FEB. 8–14, 2019 3
BY COLIN MIXSON
Former District Attorney
Charles Hynes passed away at
a hospice-care center in Florida
on Jan. 29, his son Sean
Hynes told this newspaper. He
was 83-years-old.
His specifi c cause of death
has not been determined, but
Hynes suffered from Lukemia
and other health problems
that forced him to undergo
heart surgery in recent years,
according to his son, who said
the former top prosecutor died
while away on vacation, surrounded
by his loving family.
“On Tuesday night we lost
our hero,” Sean Hynes said.
Hynes served as the borough’s
top prosecutor for 24
years, taking offi ce in 1990
and retaining the seat until
2014, after late District Attorney
Ken Thompson defeated
him in the 2013 Democratic
primary, and again in that
year’s general election — the
fi rst time in nearly 60 years
that voters ousted a reigning
district attorney.
Family and friends laid
Hynes to rest following his
Feb. 2 funeral in Queens,
where the Fire Department’s
Ceremonial Unit and Emerald
Society Pipe and Drum Band
kicked off the service with a
tribute to the late leader, who
also served as Fire Commissioner
from 1980 to 1982.
The Flatbush-raised legal
eagle — who began his career
at the do-good Legal Aid Society,
before joining the Brooklyn
district attorney’s offi ce in
1969 — leaves behind a legacy
defi ned largely by his focus on
domestic-abuse crimes, and
his reputation as a champion
for battered women, according
to a former spokesman.
“This was the driving force
of his life,” said Jerry Schmetterer,
who served as Hynes’s
communications director
for 12 years. “This is what he
cared about the most.”
Hynes, who often spoke
publicly about the abuse his
mother suffered at the hands
of his father, created a special
unit to prosecute domesticabuse
cases almost immediately
after taking offi ce — a
novel move at the time, but
has since become a standard
practice for district attorneys’
offi ces nationwide, Schmetterer
said.
“It was just about the fi rst
thing he did when he became
DA, and that’s copied everywhere
now,” he said.
And in 2005, Hynes opened
the Downtown-based Family
Justice Center with former
Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
which offers counseling, childcare,
and other services to
thousands of domestic-abuse
survivors each year. The city
went on to dedicate the facility
to Hynes’s mother, whom the
late top prosecutor credited as
the inspiration for his urge to
protect women.
“I am particularly grateful
that the mayor has agreed to
dedicate the Center in memory
of my mother, Regina
Drew,” Hynes said back when
the space opened.
Hynes enacted other lasting
progressive reforms, too,
including the Drug Treatment
Alternative-to-Prison
Program he instituted in 1990,
which sentences defendants
guilty of some felony drug
charges to treatment instead
of imprisonment, and remains
a staple of Kings County’s justice
system, according to a fellow
Democrat.
“His many innovations
provide a template for DAs
and future DAs throughout
the country,” said Brooklyn
Democratic Party boss Frank
Seddio.
But his legacy is complicated
by a long list of controversies,
including allegations that
he wielded his authority to target
political rivals and shield
allies from prosecution, and a
series of ethics scandals that
dogged him well after he left
the district attorney’s offi ce.
Hynes revealed himself as
a ruthless political operator
when he prosecuted rival attorney
John O’Hara not once,
not twice, but three times for
voter fraud, which a jury convicted
O’Hara of in 2000, making
the lawyer the fi rst New
Yorker found guilty of the
crime since legendary 19thcentury
suffragette Susan B.
Anthony.
A judge sentenced O’Hara
to 1,500 hours of community
service, $20,000 in fi nes, and
barred him from practicing
law for nearly a decade, until
he was reinstated to the bar in
2008.
The following year, a state
judicial committee released a
report calling Hynes’s prosecution
of O’Hara baseless and
politically motivated, and in
2017, a conviction-review unit
Thompson established after
Hynes left offi ce exonerated
O’Hara .
And in 2014, the city’s Department
of Investigation released
a report alleging Hynes,
in exchange for political work
on his 2013 reelection campaign,
paid a media consultant
more than $219,000 using
money seized from criminal
suspects, prompting a federal
investigation into the matter.
But the Feds in 2016 declined
to prosecute Hynes, citing a
lack of evidence.
The former top prosecutor,
however, did ultimately
cop to some illegal campaignrelated
activities, including
using his municipal e-mail
account for campaign communications,
leading watchdogs
on the city’s Confl ict of Interest
Board to slap him with a
$40,000 fi ne last year — the
largest the panel ever issued
for such violations .
SAYING GOODBYE: (Right) Patricia
Hynes entered the funeral service
for her late husband, former
District Attorney Charles Hynes
(above), who died in Florida on Jan.
29 at 83-years-old.
Photo by Steve Solomonson
BY COLIN MIXSON
Talk about a fowl commute!
Straphangers on
some Q trains took unexpected
express trips
between Prospect Park
and Kings Highway stations
on Feb. 4, after the
Metropolitan Transportation
Authority diverted
the subways so
its workers could pluck
a wayward goose from
the tracks.
The feathered obstruction
waddled onto
the Coney Island–bound
Q tracks near Parkside
Avenue around 1:40 pm,
where it lingered for more
than an hour, causing delays
and forcing trains to
skip local stops, a spokesman
for the state-run Authority
said.
Cops nabbed the hapless
bird more than an
hour later, around 3 pm,
after transit workers cut
power to the tracks amid
their rescue operation,
according to the spokesman.
And regular Q-train
service resumed soon after,
the rep said.
Police Department
reps did not immediately
return messages seeking
comment about the bird’s
physical state following
the ordeal, or its ultimate
fate.
But if the goose
plays its cards right, it
could wind up on the
bucolic grounds of an
upstate animal sanctuary
in the company of
two goats that animalloving
comedian Jon
Stewart delivered to
the refuge last year, after
officials recovered
the cloven-footed commuters
from N-train
tracks near the Hamilton
Parkway station in
Dyker Heights.
‘We lost our hero’
Goose on
the loose!
Family and colleagues remember late DA Charles Hynes
Photo by Marc Hermann