Nassau County’s former first lady, Linda Mangano, started her 15-month prison sentence Friday at a federal prison in Danbury, Ct., nearly six years after authorities arrested her and her husband in a bribery scandal as he led Nassau County’s government.

Her surrender to prison officials followed three postponements amid two failed bids to stay free on bail as she challenges the 2019 conviction that followed two trials in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

A jury found Linda Mangano guilty of two counts of lying to the FBI, conspiring to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice in a case involving her husband,  Ed Mangano, the former Nassau County executive, and politically connected former restaurateur Harendra Singh, a longtime family friend.

Prosecutors at Ed Mangano’s trial showed that from 2010 to 2015 he accepted bribes and kickbacks from Singh in exchange for favorable official actions, including steering contracts to Singh and helping him secure about $20 million in loans.

Ed Mangano was convicted of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery, federal program bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Among the things Singh gave the county executive were a $454,000 “no-show” job for Linda Mangano, free meals and vacations at posh hotels, two luxury chairs, hardwood flooring for the master bedroom in the couple’s Bethpage home and a $7,300 wristwatch for one of their sons.

The former Nassau County executive received a few more days at-large than his wife. A federal appeals court judge on Tuesday denied his motion to remain on bail pending his appeal. He was ordered to surrender immediately

Since they were convicted in 2019, Mangano and his wife had lived at home and at least during part of that time he worked at Oheka Castle, a high-end hotel and restaurant located in a Gold Coast mansion “resting majestically on the highest point of Long Island” that “emanates the elegant refinement of a chateau in France,” according to its website.

Meanwhile, Republican officials who have remained silent about the Manganos’ long road to justice, have continued to press for the elimination of cashless bail for people who have been charged – but never convicted – of a crime in New York. That is to say to send people never found guilty of a crime to jail, while the former county executive who was convicted in 2019 of repeatedly violating his public trust remains free three years later.

Newsday, which described Linda Mangano as “the stylish former politician’s wife,” reported that she will be allowed to have up to five pairs of shoes, including shower shoes, slippers and athletic shoes — the latter “with a maximum value of $100” — in a prison often referred to as a country club. Those people charged – but not convicted – of a crime who cannot afford bail do not get the same accommodations.

There is something very wrong with this scenario, but it is not unusual.

The rich, powerful and well-connected are able to take full advantage of their rights under the American legal system – and perhaps then some – because they can afford the cost of the legal representation. Everyone else – particularly the poor – cannot.

This is true in both civil and criminal cases. Small businesses and most individuals in many cases cannot afford the cost of taking on large corporations with an army of lawyers at their command.  Try suing Amazon, Apple or Facebook if you doubt this.

As the French poet Anatole France said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal their bread.”

We are not suggesting that the rich, powerful and well-connected not be allowed to assert their rights under the law. But we are saying that there is a need to make the legal system fair to all people here in New York and across the country.

This should include guaranteeing everyone a reasonable degree of legal representation and ways to level the playing field in civil actions. In New York, we can begin with opposing the elimination of cashless bail as Republicans have promoted to great advantage in Nassau County and around the state.

Democratic state legislators approved much-needed reforms to the state’s bail laws in 2019, ending the assessment of cash bail in most cases involving misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Unfortunately, the reforms were first made as part of the state budget and were not subject to public review. The result was a package that included cashless bail for too many crimes and a review of bail by judges in too few.

The state Legislature addressed those problems in April 2020 and again this year at the behest of Gov. Kathy Hochul with the omission of “dangerous” as a reason to withhold bail the source of most debate.

Critics blame cash-less bail for an increase in violent crime. But no evidence exists to support the claim that New York’s bail reform is responsible for increases in violent crime, which have occurred nationwide, including in jurisdictions without bail reform, during the pandemic.

Nassau County recently reported that authorities rearrested about 7% of defendants who were released without bail during the second quarter. But that included nonviolent crimes such as possession of controlled substances, larceny, criminal mischief and not showing up at trial.

A federally mandated change in the misdemeanor bail policy of Harris County, Texas, has resulted in fewer low-level offenders in jail and improved public safety, according to a new study released by the Quattrone Center for Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania.

An analysis by the Albany Times Union of New York’s laws suggested that relatively few people released under the new law went on to be rearrested for serious offenses.
Reviewing state data on pretrial releases between July 2020 and June 2021, the newspaper found that just 2% of 100,000 cases in which someone was released pretrial led to an arrest for a violent felony.

That means 98,000 people who did not then commit a violent felony after their release would have needlessly stayed in jail even though they had not been convicted of a crime. People who had been accused of the very same crime were released because they could afford bail.

Before making any more changes to state bail laws, legislators should also consider the catastrophic toll on the lives of those arrested who cannot afford bail and their families beginning with lost jobs, eviction from homes and broken families.

They should also find a way for those without the financial means to get something approaching the protections given the Manganos.