Dan's Papers - April 10, 2009

Ordinarily, when someone is arrested and charged with a felony, mug shots of them are released to the press which publishes what these people look like.

Last week, the DA's office released the photos of the five people arrested in the $50 million Westhampton mortgage fraud case, and the pictures do not look like what these people look like. The pictures, every one of them, make them look like the evil villains in a Batman movie. They look guilty as can be. There is no doubt about it. They were up to something big time and they got caught doing it. Case closed.

How do I know that these photos do not look like them? Easy. I know one of the people, our former County Legislator for 10 years, George Guldi. And though I don't know the others, I have seen other pictures of them, coming into the courthouse, pictures taken of them in better days, and so forth and so on. In those pictures, they look normal. They might have done something, yes. Normal people do bad things sometimes. But people, in America anyway, are innocent until proven guilty. Villains in a Batman movie do not have such protections.

I also think I know why the photos of these people released by the DA's office look the way they do. If you take a photo of somebody with a good camera, they look fine. And I think the photos of all defendants Dan's Papers has been sent by the DA's office in the past have looked okay.

There are other cameras that are not good cameras, though. The throwaway cameras come to mind. For $14, you get the camera and the photo development thrown in. Another camera that is not good is the camera imbedded in cheap cell phones. When you take a picture of a person with these cameras they look okay as long as the camera is more than one foot away from the subject. But if you take a picture from closer than one foot away, the wide-angle lens they use in these cameras distorts the image. The nose and facial bones bow out toward the camera grotesquely. The cheeks bulge. Just try it. In fact, I've had somebody take a picture of me up too close with a cell phone camera. And here it is. With it I publish a second photo taken with a good $300 Sony camera. See for yourself. Guilty of whatever I am accused of? With the cell phone camera, you betcha.

My belief is that, perhaps to save money in these hard times, the DA took these photos with a cell phone camera. And I bet they didn't even use a trained photographer. A trained photographer, given a cheap camera, would have taken them from farther away, where there is no distortion, and then enlarge them digitally to look like they had been taken up close. You can do that in two minutes with digital photography. The image of the person remains true.

It is also true that the closer to the person you get, the worse the effect. It is clear that the photo of Ethan Ellner, 49, from Plainview, was probably taken no farther away than a few inches. He should be arrested for just getting out of bed every morning looking like that. But he doesn't.

Apparently, the person taking the picture had no idea about the problem with close-ups with these cameras. For example, the one taken of Douglas MacPherson, though also bad, is not nearly as bad as the one of Ellner. No offense, but a police officer with little idea about all of this was probably told to take these pictures.

I feel particularly badly for Carrie Coakley, the 39-year-old former dominatrix in this case. No woman, particularly someone in the entertainment business, likes to be photographed in this distorted way.

The problem caused by these photographs is not only going to interfere with the possibility of their getting a fair trial because of inflamed public opinion. It is also going to interfere with other police departments rounding them up in the future if they get out of this situation, and get arrested for something else. One of them could walk right by a police officer sitting in a car looking at the picture of them on a screen. Nope, that's not him.

These people should be re-photographed and new pictures sent out. But the difficulty with this is rounding them up. Although they have been charged with serious crimes involving $50 million, they've all been released on virtual pittances of bail - as low as $5,000 to $50,000.

These five people have been charged with operating a scheme of fraudulently obtaining mortgages from banks, forging false property titles to show there were no liens, getting duplicate mortgages for the same properties from different banks and operating a ponzi scheme by taking the money and reinvesting it in the purchase of new properties. There might even be a charge - not yet made but possibly in the future - of coercing people who go to sex clubs to give up their identities. As many as 50 properties in the Hamptons were involved. It's sort of a litany of everything that has brought us down into a deep economic depression. The old ponzi scheme, fraud, identity theft, false duplication, pocket the money, forgery trick. (Although to be fair, it is a case lacking in inaccurately rated bundled derivatives.)

With these photos out there, the populace of the eastern Long Island, after looking at them on the Internet or in the newspapers, is going to demand that bail for these people be revoked, that they be recaptured, thrown into prison and the key thrown away. The public might demonstrate in front of the courthouse. Or they might go down into the Westhampton Beach Town Green and start building a makeshift wooden scaffold.

But even if none of these things happen, these photos could be considered grounds for either a mistrial or to just plain throw these charges out on grounds that the whole case has been compromised because they make the defendants look so guilty. Look how easy Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska got off. What a travesty when the guilty go free on a technicality.

(My bill for advice to legal counsel is on the way.)

Mr. DA, retake these pictures. Find the money and get the professional photographer back in. Throw away the camera cell phones.