Prisoner was allowed sex at D.A.'s office, filing says

A prisoner was permitted to have sex in the Putnam County District Attorney's Office conference room in exchange for cooperating in a criminal case against one of District Attorney Adam Levy's enemies, lawyers claim in a recent court filing.

The prisoner, Quincy McQuaid, explicitly described the sex act on Feb. 12 with girlfriend Lia LoRusso in a letter he wrote the following day from jail.

"So baby I do beleave (sic) we added another first timer to our list,” McQuaid wrote.

Both McQuaid and LoRusso are prosecution witnesses and took deals to testify against defense lawyer George Galgano, who was wiretapped by Levy's office and charged with bribing a witness. Levy has been prosecuting Galgano for over a year for allegedly bribing a woman to try to keep her from testifying against his client in a sexual assault case.

McQuaid acted as Galgano's go-between with the woman.

The letter from McQuaid is one in a series recently turned over by prosecutors to Galgano's lawyers that suggest McQuaid, who has felony robbery, weapon and drug convictions, requested a tryst through his lawyer and was accommodated in exchange for his cooperation against Galgano. LoRusso had a felony robbery conviction of her own, but it's unclear whether she was in custody at the time of the conference-room encounter.

In the filings, Galgano's lawyers, Richard Weill and Robert Altchiler, questioned whether the alleged sex benefits were disclosed to the grand jury that indicted Galgano.

The district attorney's spokeswoman, Michelle Verna, when asked about the sex allegations, initially said only, "Your inquiry implies that an inmate who was in custody of either the PCSO (Putnam County sheriff's office) or Carmel PD was left unaccompanied or unattended. I suggest you reach out to them for comment."

She later said, "Any allegation that a defendant would be able to engage in sexual contact, while in handcuffs and leg shackles, and under the constant supervision of law enforcement, is frankly ridiculous. Even Houdini would be impressed."

Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace Law School in White Plains who has been following allegations of misconduct in Levy's office for the past couple of years, said security issues posed by leaving two witnesses alone are of "critical concern." Further, it opens the door for the defense to show they are "tailoring their stories to make sure there are no inconsistencies."

"This is just beyond reckless," Gershman said. "This is just plain stupid and unconscionable to allow something like this to happen... The D.A. apparently wants to get Galgano so badly that they're going to lengths beyond belief to get him."

It's unclear what supervision there was of McQuaid and LoRusso at the time of the alleged tryst on Feb. 12. He was removed from the Putnam County jail under court order by Carmel police Detective Sgt. Mike Nagle for a little under two hours, according tojail records obtained by The Journal News under the Freedom of Information Law.

The order, signed by Assistant District Attorney Andres Gil, called for McQuaid to be taken to the district attorney's office, where his lawyer would also be present. It gave custody of McQuaid to both a member of the Carmel Police Department and district attorney's Investigator Henry Lopez.

McQuaid complained in an earlier letter that Gil kept canceling the date, which his lawyer was supposed to set up.

"So I told him to tell Gill (sic) he aint getting (expletive) until it happens," he wrote in a letter dated Jan. 20.

McQuaid's lawyer, John Cherico, did not return two phone calls seeking comment.

Sheriff's Capt. William McNamara said neither McQuaid nor LoRusso were in his department's custody that day. The court order giving Carmel police and Lopez custody of McQuaid was clear, he said.

"If the alleged conduct involving Mr. McQuaid did, in fact, happen while he was in the custody of the District Attorney's Office, and while he was inside its conference room as alleged, then it is the district attorney who should answer about such an egregious failure to exercise proper custody over him as ordered by the court," McNamara said. "For anyone to suggest that someone other than the District Attorney's Office is responsible for what allegedly goes on involving a person in its custody, in its own conference room, is nonsense."

Asked about the alleged sex act, Carmel Police Chief Michael Cazzari said his department would "unequivocally deny that any of that is true."

However, he also said he hasn't seen the filing and his department "would have to look into it."

LoRusso acknowledges meeting McQuaid in the conference room, but denies the sex act, according to a copy of a roughly 15-minute recorded phone call she made from the Westchester County jail to Galgano and obtained by The Journal News.

She had called Galgano to ask for help bailing her out on an unrelated petty-larceny charge. He declined, but told her about the letters, asking whether prosecutors and police put her up to saying certain things, according to the recorded call.

Galgano told LoRusso, "And some of the letters suggest that, you know, the lawyers that were involved were brokering dates or sex between you and Quincy at the, at the D.A.'s office... Was that part of like getting him to testify? I don't understand."

LoRusso, who sounded surprised that Galgano had the letters, responded, "All they did was they allowed us to go there. They gave us coffee and doughnuts and let us sit there, and there was no sex. I don't know why either one of us would have written that because that didn't happen. It was just we got to spend 15 minutes together..You know, we got to hold hands, that kind of thing."

According to the phone-call recording, she suggested that investigators had told her what to say in the Galgano case.

The District Attorney's Office declined to comment on the manipulation allegation.

"I didn't have what they wanted," she said in the recording, recalling when she was first arrested. "And they promised me the world. They used my daughter. They told me that if I said this, uh I'd get to go home and see my daughter..."

Galgano asked her in the recording who made her and McQuaid say certain things. She responded that it was Gil and Levy.

She met personally with Levy "many, many times," she said.

Galgano's lawyers maintain that he was exercising his "duty" as a defense lawyer to investigate allegations against his client, Lani Zaimi, when he was accused of bribing a witness in that case.

They contend he became a target because he vigorously defended Zaimi in the rape trial, which ended in a mistrial.

Zaimi is a political supporter of Sheriff Don Smith, who Levy is suing for $5 million for defamation.

A judge dismissed the first indictment against Galgano in January after finding numerous problems with the way the case was presented to the grand jury.

District Attorney candidate Bob Tendy, who won the Republican primary against Levy, said the allegations, if true, would merit an investigation.

“Given the serious nature... I would presume that the Attorney General’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would look into these allegations,” said Tendy, a longtime defense lawyer and former assistant district attorney in Manhattan.