NO MATTER WHAT, DON'T PLAY GRAB-ASS WITH A JUDGE

WHEELCHAIR-BOUND LAWYER WHO CANNOT CONTROL HIS ARMS OR LEGS CHARGED WITH SEX HARASSMENT AFTER ‘GRABBING JUDGE’S BUTTOCKS’

Mail Online
May 13, 2010

A wheelchair-bound lawyer who cannot control his arm or leg movements has been charged with sexual harassment against a judge.

Hippocrates 'Cheecho' Mertsaris, 35, is accused of grabbing the the 40-year-old administrative judge's inner thigh and buttocks in an office on Long Island, New York.

Mertsaris, a Taxi and Limousine Commission lawyer, has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth and has 'no voluntary control of his arms and legs'.

His brain was damaged during delivery at birth and his father and an aide help him with almost everything, including eating.

But now the lawyer is accused of sexually attacking the TLC judge, whose name has been withheld as she is considered the victim of a sex crime.

Wyatt Gibbons, an attorney for Mertsaris, said: 'He whacked her in the butt but it wasn't sexual abuse. He has spastic movements.'

'We are not saying he didn't touch her, but he didn't grab her or feel her up. Nothing like that. It was nothing sexual.'

He told Fox News: 'This is one of the most stunning displays of a lack of compassion, a lack of human kindness, a lack of judgment.'

After the alleged attack in October, the judge filed a police report and Mertsaris was charged with sexual abuse.

He was brought in and fingerprinted.

The incident occurred when his aide had gone to file papers.

Mr Gibbons said he has repeatedly asked the district attorney to drop the case.

'If he was starving to death and had a hamburger in front of him he couldn't lean over to pick it up,' he told the New York Daily News.

Mertsaris, who graduated from college with a law degree, uses his head to manipulate a special computer to write.

A spokesman for the district attorney's office told Fox 5 News that the prosecutor believes that Mertsaris can use his hands.

But the TV station said that memos presented to the district attorney from his doctor and physical therapist said his muscles are very tight and are '...mostly beyond his...control.'

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for June 15.