Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. might be one of those understated legal geniuses who see things in life’s tawdry fact patterns the rest of us miss. Or maybe he’s just the son of a famous man, former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who rode his daddy’s coattails all the way into a job that’s just too big for his meager talents. Gauging by his office’s performance in the Anna Gristina case, I am not checking the genius box when it comes time to cast a ballot for Vance.
Ms. Gristina was charged by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office earlier this year with promoting prostitution. At her arraignment, prosecutors from Vance’s office stood in the well of Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom and made a star of Ms. Gristina: she has made millions of dollars as a high-class, high-end prostitute to the wealthy in Manhattan; she has friends in high places, and is close to those who hold the reins of power in the city; she’s operated a brothel out of an Upper East Side apartment. Vance’s minion’s transformed Ms. Gristina into a prep schooler’s wet dream; she was everything money could buy.
