A former Erie County prosecutor says District Attorney John J. Flynn’s team let her go when her messy divorce spilled into public view and made Flynn uncomfortable.
Sara Dee, in a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights, says Flynn and one of his top assistants, Michael J. Keane, discriminated against her because she is a victim of domestic violence from her husband.
Flynn, however, says he never knew Dee considered herself a domestic violence victim. He contends that she resigned when compromising information about her – statements she wrote in a private journal – went public.
He acknowledged the damaging information went public against her wishes. Dee alleges her husband, Erie County jail Sgt. Robert Dee, had it posted on Facebook.
Still, Flynn said, her comments exposed potentially criminal conduct – from her private life years ago – so he turned the matter over to the State Police.
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Flynn also revealed that Robert Dee's father, James Dee, now faces charges because the journal details were posted on his Facebook page. James Dee has pleaded not guilty in Buffalo City Court to charges of criminal contempt and disobeying a court order.
Prosecutors from Niagara County are handling the case, Flynn said, because his office has a conflict of interest in the matter. A lawyer for Robert Dee did not return a telephone message from The News seeking comment about his wife's allegations.
“While I do sympathize with anyone who is going through a nasty divorce, I find it offensive that she is accusing me of domestic violence discrimination,” Flynn said of Sara Dee. Noting that his office maintains a 15-person staff in its Domestic Violence Bureau, he said he is “vigorously defending victims of domestic violence every minute of every day here, and to be accused of that is personally offensive.”
The attorney who prepared the complaint for Sara Dee, Lindy Korn, told The Buffalo News that the facts of the matter are fully told in the complaint to the Division of Human Rights, and she would not elaborate publicly about them.
In the complaint, Sara Dee said she had received excellent evaluations over her past 14 years with the DA's Office.
She said she left the couple’s home Oct. 23 with her two children on the advice of her attorney. Without naming Flynn, she said her “employers” were aware of the “physical, emotional and financial harm” her husband had inflicted on her and helped her contact the Family Justice Center of Erie County, which assists people fleeing domestic violence situations.
Then in January, with divorce proceedings underway, Dee says her husband allowed pages from an old personal journal to go public on Facebook, when the judge in the case had told him not to do so.
The contents focused on a “medical condition” from 15 years earlier, she said. She took two days off, on Jan. 23 and Jan. 24, to deal with the fallout and prepare for a special court hearing held because of the Facebook post, she wrote.
But on the morning of Jan. 24, a Friday, Michael Keane called her, Dee said in the complaint. Keane, the first deputy district attorney, told her that the information on Facebook had “gone viral” and people from inside and outside the office were calling Flynn about it, Dee wrote.
Dee's complaint reveals no details about the information posted. But Flynn said his staff told him there was worrisome information about a matter from years earlier that could constitute a crime. Keane, according to Dee, told her that unless she came in that day to answer their questions, she should resign.
She then asked if it would help if she just resigned, she wrote.
Keane agreed and instructed her to send a resignation letter. But, Dee continued, she soon realized she did not want to resign and relayed her change of heart in an email the same day to Keane and the office’s chief of administration, Kathleen A. Callan. Callan, however, told her the resignation was in process and could not be undone, according to Dee’s complaint.
Dee never sent a resignation letter, so she asserts in her complaint that she was, in fact, fired. According to Flynn, Dee agreed at the time that her offer to resign could not be rescinded. No one fired her, he said.
“I categorically deny that she was fired,” he said. “I’m the only one in this office who has the authority to fire anyone. That has to come from my mouth. And I never spoke to her.”
Her marriage to Robert Dee has in past years prevented the District Attorney’s Office from investigating high-profile deaths in the Erie County Holding Center. In 2016, the state Commission of Correction urged Flynn to begin a criminal investigation into the homicide of Richard A. Metcalf Jr. The state agency said deputies asphyxiated Metcalf years earlier by knotting the strings of a spit mask tightly around his neck. Robert Dee had supervised the use of force against the inmate, the agency said. The county Medical Examiner's Office concluded Metcalf's death was due to a heart attack, although it ruled the case a homicide.
Citing the marriage, Flynn urged a judge to appoint someone else to investigate. The role went to Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Pettit Rieman, who announced in 2017 that she would charge no one. She made the announcement after the five-year statute of limitations ran out on the most likely charges, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Flynn again cited the conflict of interest when urged to criminally investigate the death of Holding Center inmate India Cummings, who had been allowed to mentally and physically deteriorate in her Holding Center cell, the Commission of Correction said. The commission said the care provided by Sheriff Timothy B. Howard’s staff "was so grossly incompetent and inadequate as to shock the conscience.” An Erie County pathologist could not determine the cause of Cummings' death and did not classify it as a homicide. Howard has said the commission's conclusion was "no more than an opinion."
The state Attorney General’s Office began an investigation but never announced charges against any of the medical personnel who had been expected to care for Cummings.
Flynn on Thursday said he could not predict whether the Dees' likely divorce will free him to investigate any future Holding Center deaths if Robert Dee is somehow involved or on the periphery. He said he could not say whether fallout from the messy split would create some new conflict of interest.
