Last Dance, Last Chance

Judge Ronald H. Tills. He also agreed to withdraw all his pretrial motions, waived any right to appeal his sentence, and agreed to surrender all his licenses to practice medicine. Sentencing was set for August 4.
    Still, he couldn’t step back without making a statement, and his passionate words before he was sentenced would return to haunt him. He spoke, as always, of his pain: “The loss of one’s patient will forever haunt any moral doctor. Whatever determination you may decree cannot be worse than this pain. This pain alone, I assure you, would be sufficient to deter any physician from making the same mistake in the future.
    “But my pain is even greater than that. If you could see the look of disappointment in the eyes of my son…the look of fear in my daughter’s eyes…If you could see the pain in my wife and my mother’s heart…the disgrace in failing your [my] father’s memory and reputation, you would know the pain I feel every moment.”
    And having learned that the judge was a Shriner, Anthony shamelessly threw in a quote from that organization to cinch his plea for a light sentence—or, preferably, no sentence at all.
    He was shocked to hear himself sentenced to what Frank Sedita had requested: six months in jail, plus five years probation, 250 hours of community service, and a fine of $2,500.
    The final ignominy came as he was handcuffed and led off like a common criminal. Debbie fainted. The television cameras caught it all. Anthony Pignataro was the first medical doctor in the region’s long history to be convicted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide.
    Debbie vowed to wait for Anthony so that they could try to rebuild their marriage. “I was an old-fashioned Italian wife,” she recalled later. “I was there for Anthony, supporting him all the way. He made the decisions, and I went along with them.”
    What Debbie still didn’t know was that another woman was also waiting for Anthony Pignataro.

14
    J ail in the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, was a profound shock for Anthony Pignataro. He was used to the best, and he considered himself to be among the upper echelon of society in intelligence and breeding. Now he was forced to mingle with the kind of people he had never associated with—except, perhaps, in his early residency years when he worked in the ER. But those people had been patients, not his peers in any sense. This prison world of walls and bars was totally alien to him, and he was afraid, although he also believed that he was savvy enough to get by on his charm.
    “The prospects of going to prison,” he wrote, “are without a doubt the most fearful dilemmas one could imagine…Given the high profile nature of my case and the incredibly intense media coverage, it was anticipated that I would be a target for other inmates.”
    He didn’t know the half of it. Con-wise prisoners salivate at the prospect of meeting a wealthy and infamous prisoner. Celebrity prisoners often have money to share, and they are ultimately naive about dealing with the inside of “the joint.” A man like Anthony Pignataro was a pigeon to be plucked, even though he bragged that the guards were all on his side and were looking out for him. One guard, he said, even brought another prisoner to his cell with instructions to “show Tony the ropes.”
    Whether that was the way they met doesn’t really matter, but Anthony soon looked upon fellow prisoner Arnie Letovich * as his friend and protector—a special angel to look over him. He never questioned why Arnie seemed to be looking out for him.
    Some of the other prisoners, especially the African Americans, viewed Pignataro with genuine amazement. He wasn’t allowed to wear his toupee inside, but he still had the metal screws protruding from his bald head. One of them became infected and had to be removed, so his head looked a little lopsided after that. The African-American cons dubbed him “Frankenstein” and figured he had to be just plain crazy.
    Anthony bragged about how rapidly he fit in in jail. He felt he was popular and well liked, but he was careful not to cross invisible lines drawn by different groups. He had been assured that with time off for good behavior, he would have to serve only four months. It seemed a minuscule sentence for the life of a 26-year-old woman, but it was all the law could decree. Even so, four months seemed like four years to Anthony.
    Like the other prisoners, he lived in an 8-by-12