For One Staten Island Campaign, a Special Prosecutor Instead of an Auditor

By JIM DWYER

Criminal charges are being brought over expenditures and filings that are routinely corrected or penalized through audits by the Campaign Finance Board.

The case would be sublimely weird even without the participation of the special prosecutor, Roger Bennet Adler, a past president of the Brooklyn Bar Association. A judge found that in an earlier stint as a special prosecutor, in a different election law case, Mr. Adler had brought in slanted witnesses and permitted hearsay only when it hurt the defendant. He also, the judge ruled, tried to use a witness’s silence against him.

“The cumulative weight of the errors and improprieties cannot be ignored,” the judge, Gloria Goldstein, wrote in dismissing the charges against Porfirio Placencia, who had been accused of filing a false instrument.