Newsday asks court to unseal Levy case, release non-prosecution deal

Newsday cited “significant public interest” in asking a judge on Tuesday to unseal a lawsuit brought by former Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy in his attempt to block the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office from releasing his non-prosecution agreement.

In an order to show cause before Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Paul J. Baisley, Newsday requested intervenor status in the case and asked the judge to deny Levy’s motion to prevent the DA from disclosing documents Newsday had sought under the Freedom of Information Law.

The non-prosecution agreement has been kept under a shroud of secrecy since Levy agreed to it in 2011 with former Suffolk DA Thomas Spota, ending Levy’s political career and forcing him to forfeit his $4 million campaign war chest following a probe into his campaign financing and practices.

In its proposed order, Newsday argued it should be permitted to intervene in the case to “challenge the sealing order in place, and to vindicate its own rights under” the Freedom of Information Law.

Newsday initially filed the information request with the DA’s office in February, citing Levy’s recent public comments about the agreement in an opinion piece in Newsday in which he said he regretted signing it and called his offenses “irregularities” and “not a death penalty item.”

Officials in the Suffolk District Attorney’s office under District Attorney Tim Sini had sought to produce the non-prosecution agreement to Newsday, but Levy on May 17 filed suit to try to keep the order confidential.

At the time he signed the agreement in 2011, Levy said he accepted responsibility for his offenses, which he said concerned “fundraising through my political campaign,” though neither he nor Spota disclosed specific allegations. Newsday had written a series of stories detailing some of those campaign practices while Spota had been engaged in a 16-month probe.

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In 2019, Spota and a top lieutenant, former anticorruption chief Christopher McPartland, were convicted of obstruction of justice and other federal charges in a case involving crimes by former Suffolk Police Chief James Burke. Spota and McPartland await sentencing.

McPartland, through his attorney Larry Krantz, on Monday said he welcomed public release of the Levy documents to show that he acted properly in investigating Levy. Levy has argued that he was the victim of a “cabal” that sought to intimidate and remove him from office.

In its filing, Newsday argued that sealing nearly the entire Levy litigation “violates Newsday’s and the public’s right of access.”

The Newsday filing argued that “blanket closure orders” are “particularly disfavored and suspect,” and noted that the District Attorney’s office itself “believes that the agreement is disclosable and deserving of public scrutiny.” As such, the Newsday filing stated, “it is hard to imagine that Mr. Levy has an overriding compelling interest that could justify the total secrecy that has been imposed.”

Further, Newsday argued that the public’s right to know, and the newspaper’s right to the information, take precedence over any consideration of Levy’s right to privacy in his request to keep the documents.

” … Whatever ‘minimal’ privacy interest the former highest-ranking member of the Suffolk County government may possess is utterly dwarfed by the significant public interest in the non-prosecution agreement he struck with the former district attorney, causing him to turn over $4 million and abruptly end his political career,” the Newsday filing stated. “The public interest in this agreement is now compounded further by the fact that the other party to the agreement [Spota] was recently convicted of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and other federal crimes.”

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.