Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes unseated in Democratic primary

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

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new york city politics, politics & elections

Eyewitness News

BROOKLYN -- Kenneth Thompson, a lawyer best known for representing the maid in the sex assault scandal involving former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn, won the Democratic nomination for Brooklyn district attorney Tuesday, unseating longtime prosecutor Charles Hynes.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Thompson was leading with 55 percent of the vote.

Hynes has the support of the GOP but says he won't run as a Republican. There are no other major party candidates in the general election.

Thompson, 48, is a former federal prosecutor who tried the brutal police attack on Abner Louima in 1999. Since going into private practice, he has represented victims of a 2007 steam pipe explosion in midtown Manhattan and Sherr-Una Booker, the woman at the center of a domestic violence scandal that caused serious political damage to then-Gov. David Paterson, who eventually dropped plans to run for a full term.

But Thompson became known around the world as the lawyer representing Nafissatou Diallo, the maid who accused Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan hotel room in May 2011. The case fell apart amid questions over her credibility. While Thompson was lauded for his steadfast defense of the maid, he was criticized for blocking prosecutors from speaking to her, and for allowing her to reveal her identity in a television interview before the investigation had been completed.

Thompson takes over one of the nation's largest district attorney's offices - it sees more than 1,500 new cases a week and handles more than 80,000 per year.

Charles "Joe" Hynes, 78, held the job more than 20 years - a ubiquitous figure with a tough-on-crime persona won him diverse fans - and critics - throughout the borough.

He was blasted by some for being soft on crime in the borough's large but insular Orthodox Jewish community. He was accused of catering to powerful rabbis who did not want criminal cases, especially sex abuse cases, handled by secular authorities. Hynes denied the allegations.

He also this year ordered a review of more than 50 cases handled by a now-retired detective after a conviction was overturned and questions came up about the reliability of a drugged-out witness used in many of the cases.