Kathleen Rice ready to step up as New York State attorney general

Larger Text

Print

E-mail

1 Comment

Kathleen Rice

Tweet

“I believe that I’m the only person in this race who can achieve the kind of reform we need now, especially in our state government. I stand on my record, and again it’s the most experienced person for this position and that’s the only thing I’m focused on right now,” she says.
Looking back on her career as Nassau DA, Rice said she has dealt with many harrowing cases but one specific one stands out for her.
Rice has made cracking down on drunk driving a signature part of her time as DA. She was diligent in prosecuting a drunk driver who killed a seven-year-old Irish American girl in 2005.

“I’ll never forget this case. It was a terrible tragedy where a seven-year-old girl named Katie Flynn, who was a passenger in a limousine that was carrying her family back from a wedding,” said Rice, providing some background.

Martin Heidgen, driving a 1999 Chevrolet pickup truck the wrong way in the southbound lanes of the Meadowbrook Parkway, slammed into the limousine killing the driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, immediately and decapitating Katie.

“Her grandparents also suffered serious injuries, and her father and her sister Grace. It was a terrible case,” recalls the DA.
“Heidgen was rightly convicted. The jury agreed that the facts were so egregious that he was guilty of murder.”

Rice and the Flynn family worked together to pass legislation to come down hard on drink drivers in New York State.

“In the aftermath of that case the Flynns were able to put aside their enormous palpable grief and travel up to Albany with us with legislation that my office wrote to fill in the gaping hole in the law that existed for DAs like me across New York State in trying to hold accountable and prosecute the worst of the worst drunk drivers who kill and seriously injure their victims,” she said.

“In a bipartisan way we were able to get these laws passed in large part due to the advocacy of the Flynn family, and now we can now hold a lot more drunk drivers accountable,” she says.

“I’m very proud to be part of that conversation, and I proudly carry the mantel for those who lost their lives or were seriously injured by drunk drivers and will continue to fight on their behalf.”

Rice believes the biggest issue facing New York at the minute is the lack of faith in the state government. 

 “There is no question that the number one issue in New York at the moment is restoring confidence in our state government. It is at an all time low, and 80% of New Yorkers feel that their government is dysfunctional,” she said.

Rice has already put strategies in place to begin working on bringing back the state government to an acceptable level.

“I’ve put out a public integrity plan that includes reform such as instituting campaign finance reform, an independence state ethics committee, independent redistricting. All steps that we can take to reform the political and the governmental ethics reform to lead to that reform in Albany.”

Print

E-mail

Tweet