The attorney for disgraced ex-state comptroller Alan Hevesi is requesting that Mr. Hevesi’s sentencing judge disclose the financial arrangements the judge has with the lawyer’s estranged father. Earlier this month, Mr. Hevesi asked the judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Bart Stone, to recuse himself because of the alleged conflict created by the judge’s long-standing “social and fiduciary relationship with the bitterly estranged father” of Mr. Hevesi’s lawyer, Bradley D. Simon (NYLJ, March 9).
In October, Mr. Hevesi pleaded guilty to approving $250 million in pension fund investments in exchange for accepting some $1 million in gifts. According to the recusal papers, Justice Stone compiled a “confidential record” on Oct. 6, the day before Mr. Hevesi pleaded guilty, in which the judge identified potential areas of conflict and potential grounds for recusal. In this record, the judge revealed that he is the executor of Mr. Simon’s parents’ wills, a trustee of Mr. Simon’s parents’ revocable life trusts, and knew that Mr. Simon had been disinherited by his father. Justice Stone has set March 28 as the date he will either recuse himself or sentence Mr. Hevesi.
