New York Daily News – by TINA MOORE, RICH SCHAPIRO
Sanford Rubenstein needs a lawyer.
The high-powered attorney has been accused of raping a woman at his Manhattan home following the Rev. Al Sharpton’s 60th birthday bash on Wednesday, the Daily News has learned.
The alleged incident, first reported at NYDailyNews.com, took place at Rubenstein’s swanky E. 64th St. apartment hours after Sharpton’s star-studded party at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan, law enforcement sources told The News.
The alleged victim is a 42-year-old business executive and a “top official” at Sharpton’s National Action Network, according to sources and the civil rights advocacy group.
The accusation is being investigated by the NYPD as a third-degree rape, a law enforcement source said. Such a charge is brought in a case in which a victim is “incapable of consent,” suggesting that the woman may have been intoxicated or passed out during the alleged encounter.
Reached on Saturday night, Rubenstein, 70, declined to comment. He has not been charged.
“Sanford Rubenstein vehemently denies any misconduct,” said his lawyer, Michael Ross.
The alleged victim could not be reached.
In a statement, Sharpton’s National Action Network, or NAN, sought to distance itself from the allegation.
“The allegations as reported occurred at a private residence after a NAN event and had nothing to do with NAN nor Rev. Al Sharpton, therefore we have no comment at this time,” the statement read.
Among the bold-faced names at Sharpton’s soirée were Mayor de Blasio, Gov. Cuomo, director Spike Lee and legendary singer Aretha Franklin.
That Rubenstein attended the bash was no surprise; he and Sharpton have been buddy-buddy for nearly 20 years.
Their alliance was formed in 1997 when Rubenstein was handling the civil case for Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was sodomized with a broom handle by a gang of cops inside a Brooklyn precinct house.
Rubenstein, in a self-published 2010 memoir, described how he became Sharpton’s go-to legal eagle. When one of Rubenstein’s associates suggested Sharpton be invited to a rally for Louima, Rubenstein initially balked.
“I’d never met Sharpton; all I really knew about him was what I’d learned from the media, which had generally portrayed him as a controversial figure — maybe too controversial, to my thinking,” Rubenstein wrote in the memoir, titled “The Outrageous Rubenstein.”
“I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
“The involvement of Sharpton and his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, ended up benefiting the march and the cause of obtaining justice for Louima immensely.
“In addition, I would go on to become both Sharpton’s friend and his personal lawyer.”
Since then, Rubenstein has lived in the media spotlight as one of the city’s most high-profile attorneys.
Known for his dapper suits and frequent press conferences, Rubenstein has been front and center in many of the city’s most shocking police brutality cases.
The Louima case was settled in July 2001 for a stunning $7.1 million, the largest police brutality payout in city history at the time.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association paid Louima an additional $1.6 million as part of the settlement.
With Sharpton’s backing, Rubenstein also represented the family of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old man who died in a hail of police bullets outside a Queens club on the morning of the day he was to be married in 2006.
That case, settled in 2010, resulted in a $7.15 million payout to Bell’s estate and two other victims.
It came as no surprise when Rubenstein was tapped to represent the family of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old Staten Island man who died in July after a police officer put him into an apparent chokehold while he was being arrested for selling loose cigarettes.
Rubenstein is a regular presence at National Action Network’s Harlem headquarters.
In fact, Sharpton has been known to refer to the legal ace as “Brother Rubenstein.”
Born in Brooklyn, he was raised in a Long Island City housing project.
“From the projects to the penthouse,” Rubenstein has said in describing the arc of his life.
A graduate of Brooklyn Law School, he was admitted to the city bar in 1972, records show.
Rubenstein is now a fixture on cable news, appearing as a legal analyst on CNN, Fox and MSNBC.
In his online bio, the famed attorney says he’s best known for “the trial before the trial in the court of public opinion.”
“Before a lawyer steps into a courtroom when representing a victim in a high-profile case, there is a trial in the media that shapes public opinion on behalf of one side or the other,” Rubenstein is quoted as saying.
“My job and responsibility is to get my client’s view of the facts out before the public as to offset or preempt any negative material being put out by the other side.”
In New York, rape in the third degree is a class E felony. It is punishable by one to four years in prison. According to the state Penal Code, Section 130.25, a person is guilty of the charge of rape in the third degree when:
- He or she engages in sexual intercourse with another person who is incapable of consent by reason of some factor other than being less than 17 years old;
- Being 21 years old or more, he or she engages in sexual intercourse with another person less than 17 years old; or
- He or she engages in sexual intercourse with another person without such person’s consent where such lack of consent is by reason of some factor other than incapacity to consent.
STATEMENT BY NATIONAL ACTION NETWORK (NAN) & REV. AL SHARPTON REGARDING ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SANFORD RUBENSTEIN
National Action Network and Rev. Al Sharpton was made aware by media that a NAN top official made allegations against Sanford Rubenstein. National Action Network and Rev. Al Sharpton has not been notified or advised by any official investigating authorities. The allegations as reported occurred at a private residence after a NAN event and had nothing to do with NAN nor Rev. Al Sharpton, therefore we have no comment at this time.
SANFORD IS CENTER STAGE IN MANY OF THE BIGGEST CASES
Abner Louima
Settlement: $8.7 Million
In 1997 the 30-year-old Haitian immigrant was sodomized by cops using a broom handle in a bathroom inside Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct stationhouse. Louima agreed to a settlement of $8.7 million with the city and the police union. It was the largest police brutality payout in city history at the time.
Sean Bell
Settlement: $7.15 Million
In 2006 the unarmed 23-year-old was killed in a hail of 50 police bullets fired outside of a Queens strip club early on the morning of his wedding. The city agreed to pay $3.25 million to Bell’s estate, $3 million to victim Joseph Guzman and $900,000 to victim Trent Benefield.
Tabitha Mullings
Settlement: $17.9 Million
In 2012, the 35-year-old Brooklyn woman’s hands and feet had to be amputated after a hospital sent her home with a diagnosis of kidney stones and FDNY medics refused to take her back to the emergency room the following day. By the time she returned to Brooklyn Hospital Center, she had developed a sepsis infection and gangrene spread to her extremities. In a settlement, Mullings was awarded a whopping $17.9 million — $9.4 million from Brooklyn Hospital Center and $8.5 million from the city.
Cops search penthouse of Sharpton associate accused of rape
New York Post – by Larry Celona and Jamie Schram
Four NYPD detectives showed up to search the penthouse apartment of high-profile lawyer Sanford Rubenstein on the Upper East Side on Sunday, after he was accused of raping a close associate of the Rev. Al Sharpton, sources told The Post.
No charges have been filed against Rubenstein, who allegedly attacked the woman in his posh East 64th Street penthouse in the hours after both attendedSharpton’s 60th-birthday party at the Four Seasons restaurant Wednesday night.
The alleged victim is a Manhattan executive in her 40s who lives in Brooklyn, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
She had attended Sharpton’s star-studded party — with guests including Gov. Cuomo, Spike Lee and Aretha Franklin — with another woman, sources said.
Afterward, she and the other woman went back to Rubenstein’s place for drinks, the sources said. At some point, the other woman departed, and the victim and Rubenstein, who had met through Sharpton, were alone.
“She passed out and woke to him” violating her, a source said.
Rubenstein, 70 — who has won tens of millions of dollars in city-settlement payouts in police-abuse cases, including the torture of Abner Louima, the wedding-night fatal shooting of Sean Bell, and more recently, the fatal chokehold arrest of Eric Garner — had his driver take the woman home to Brooklyn the next morning, with Rubenstein first getting dropped off himself at his offices on Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, the source said.
The sickened woman was bleeding from the sexual contact, the source said.
When the bleeding continued into Friday, she went to Methodist Hospital, the source said.
It was hospital officials who determined that they were dealing with the aftermath of a sexual assault, and called the cops, who got Manhattan district attorney sex-crimes prosecutors involved, the source said.
“She was knocked out — and that is rape,” the second source said, adding that “there are credible aspects of the case and she’s credible — but she doesn’t remember much.”
Investigators are awaiting toxicology results on the woman’s blood, the first source said.
So far, her case is being bolstered by witness accounts of her extreme drunkenness in the hours before the party, the second source said.
“She wasn’t thinking about it until she realized [at the hospital] that this was a crime . . . She’s cooperating” with the investigation, the source added.
The incident is being investigated as a violation of the state’s third-degree-rape statute, which makes it a felony to engage in sexual intercourse with a person who is unable to give consent.
The charge carries a maximum sentencing range of 1¹/₃ to 4 years.
Rubenstein and Sharpton go way back. Rubinstein hosted a party in his penthouse for Sharpton in 2001 after the civil-rights leader was released from prison — where he lost 30 pounds in a hunger strike. Sharpton had been busted for protesting missile tests on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
The lawyer also won a $200,000 payout from the city after Sharpton was stabbed in 1991 during a Brooklyn rally.
“I know him, I know her,” Sharpton said Saturday night of an investigation that now has him in the middle between two friends.
“But how can I know what happened at somebody’s residence after my party?”
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh
http://nypost.com/2014/10/05/nypd-investigating-lawyer-for-alleged-rape-after-sharpton-party/
Easy to beat. She didn’t scream rape; someone talked her into it. She was so drunk, she can’t remember what really really happened. By time she went to the hospital with bleeding, someone else may have been involved.
Reasonable doubt? …. Piece of cake.
I don’t care what happens to these crooks. Throw ’em all in jail….. the rape victim’s probably guilty of something too if she was hanging out with that crowd, and working for Sharpton.
No sympathy for anyone involved, and may they all suffer a lot worse.