BUFFALO, N.Y. — The two candidates competing to be Erie County’s top prosecutor faced off in a debate Thursday hosted by St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute.
Much of the discussion concerned television ads by Republican James Gardner’s campaign that aired after a 2 On Your Side Investigates story about the decades-old drunk driving arrest of Acting District Attorney Michael Keane, a Democrat.
“I accepted responsibility for my mistake,” Keane said. “It was 40 years ago. I was 21 years old. I was a senior in college in upstate New York, and I pleaded guilty to a non-criminal violation. He’s characterized it as a crime. He characterized me as a criminal. That is false.”
Gardner responded, “I believe that ad is factual. It’s factual in the charges that he was charged with. And just because my opponent accepted a plea offer to a non-criminal disposition doesn’t mean that he didn’t commit those crimes.”
Gardner’s ad took select passages from a 2 On Your Side story about Keane’s 40-year-old guilty plea to driving while ability impaired, which is a non-criminal violation. Two other charges of assault and resisting arrest were later dismissed.
Keane later sought to turn the use of the ad on Gardner’s campaign, which obtained the arrest reports from the Town of Colonie. The Colonie town attorney later acknowledged that details of the dismissed charges were mistakenly disclosed despite being sealed by a judge in the 1990s.
“They’re continuing to use the ad and violat(ing) a court sealing order,” Keane said. “If you are going to violate court orders — and my opponent works for a judge — if you are going to violate court orders and continue to do that, that’s the kind of judgment that does not belong in the district attorney’s office.”
Gardner responded by saying that his campaign “has done nothing wrong.”
“The only person who’s done something wrong in this matter is my opponent,” Gardner said. “He broke the law. And I understand that he wants to say that it was 40 years ago. But what do you call somebody who breaks the law? How can you as the chief law enforcement officer deny a defendant engaged in … accused of the same conduct the same plea offer that he himself availed himself of?”
Keane said students at St. Joe’s could perhaps learn a lesson from his arrest and how he handled it in the decades since.
“One of the things that you should know is that you are going to make mistakes,” Keane said. “Your friends and family are going to make mistakes. You are going to have adversity in your life, and you should be able to get up, clean yourself off, and move on with your life. That’s what I did.”