Outside Counsel

If Altimio Sanchez is the Bike Path Rapist then good-- Western New York just became a little bit safer. I think anybody who runs, anybody with a connection to UB and anyone who lives around here has felt a horrible chill whenever the case crosses their minds, and I suspect that it crosses everyone's mind from time to time. Of course, right now all we know is what Frank Clark is telling us, and that doesn't mean much. Frank Clark is, after all, the guy who is telling us what an outstanding piece of police work this is. I've seen Andy LoTempio do a lot with cases this bad. It's interesting to think about Andy, actually. This is it for someone like him-- when you get the biggest case of the century, you are the Big Kahuna among criminal defense attorneys. That's what this is, and that's what he is-- a guy who rose to the bench, then quit because he liked trying cases more. The funny thing about criminal law is that it is much more about temperament than any other field I can think of-- the people who do it are in it because they love doing it. The biggest case of a career that has included quite a few significant cases, but it isn't big because of the fee. The Sanchez family has just had their entire lives knocked out. House, savings-- all of it.

If it is Al Sanchez we will never know how such an ordinary, regular guy could have had this monstrous secret life. That will be beyond understanding, I think, so the most important thing about this is something we will never know. All we can know, actually, is that guilty or not, Al Sanchez' family has been destroyed by this. I can't even imagine what it is going to cost to mount a defense to this complex, technical matter-- I'm thinking that something in the six figures just for openers is probably about right, and I am not even thinking about Andy's fee. Just three more innocent victims.