Publication:

Publication date:
Page:
Edition:
Section:
Copyright:
Byline:
Day:

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

02/15/2007
1A, 2A
National
Michael Zeigler

Peterkin case reaffirms lawyer's vocation

Byline: Michael Zeigler
Michael Zeigler
Staff writer
IRONDEQUOIT - Over Christmas vacation, while his family celebrated, Daniel L. Aureli hunkered in his law
office to prepare for a case he was taking to trial in a week.
Aureli represented 19-year-old Don L. Peterkin, one of two Rochester brothers charged with abducting and
terrorizing an Irondequoit couple and their toddler on Easter Sunday.
The facts of the case were horrific: The family was abducted from their garage at gunpoint as they arrived
home after spending Easter with family, robbed, ordered to withdraw money from ATMs, and forced into the
trunk of their car, where the wife was sexually abused.
As Aureli pored over depositions and reports and scrutinized crime-scene photos, more than once he felt a
shudder of revulsion, thought about his wife and his two daughters, and wondered why he had accepted the
case as a court-appointed lawyer.
But midway through Peterkin's trial, Aureli felt awash with a reaffirmation of his role as a defense lawyer - a
vocation he felt called to as a high school student when he read To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel about a
Southern lawyer who represented a wildly unpopular criminal client.
Committed to due process
"Just because it's not popular doesn't mean you shouldn't do it," Aureli said before Peterkin was sentenced
Tuesday.
"I wouldn't trade the experience of representing Don Peterkin for anything," he said. "When I took this case I
knew it would be very troubling and difficult. And it certainly was. But it helped reaffirm for me why I
became a lawyer - to make sure that everyone gets due process, no matter what crime they're accused of or
how heinous the facts of a case are."
What he did on Peterkin's behalf is no different from the job any lawyer performs by vigorously representing
a client, whether it's the plaintiff in a slip-and-fall case or the defendant in a homicide, Aureli said.

1/3

But the public often fails to understand how lawyers can defend the indefensible, say some in the legal
profession.
"Part of it is that people don't always understand what professionals do and why they do it," said Thomas G.
Smith, president-elect of the Monroe County Bar Association.
"Doctors need to treat bad people with injuries sometimes," Smith said. "Medical professionals in the
emergency room don't quiz a guy about how that bullet got in his gut. In the same way, lawyers take an oath
to make sure everyone is represented, including those who are accused of terrible crimes."
Smith remembers his own experience with representing an unpopular client.
In the mid-1990s, he was the attorney for personal-injury lawyer James "The Hammer" Shapiro, who was
castigated by fellow lawyers and investigated by the Attorney Grievance Committee for his over-the-top,
in-your-face television commercials soliciting clients.
"I was running into colleagues, lawyers, who were saying, 'How can you do this? You're hurting the
profession by defending this man.' Well, I would have been hurting the profession had I not been defending
this man. Essentially, I would have been denying him whatever skills I had as a lawyer to represent his First
Amendment rights. I was proud to do that even though I didn't like the messages he was conveying or the way
he was doing it."
Indeed, it's not just the general public that sometimes doesn't understand the role of lawyers, Smith said.
Last month, a high-ranking official of the U.S. Department of Defense said corporations should consider
whether they want to be represented by law firms that also defend alleged terrorists being held in
Guantanamo, Cuba.
The official, Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, resigned after law firms across
the nation protested his remarks and said the American system of justice requires that even the worst
defendants have the right to legal representation.
That concept is what drew Aureli to the practice of law.
As a student at the former Cardinal Mooney High School in Greece, Aureli, now 53, read To Kill a
Mockingbird and was awed by main character Atticus Finch, who paid a heavy personal price for representing
an accused rapist.
A Gates native who grew up in Chili, Aureli has lived in Irondequoit for 25 years, practices law from an office
at Titus and Portland avenues, and served six years on the Irondequoit Town Board.
A daughter's questions
Considering his connection to Irondequoit, he was asked several times during Peterkin's trial how he could
represent someone who was charged with brutalizing a family from the same community. "I got a few phone
calls, but nothing remarkably disturbing," he said.
His 9-year-old daughter asked the same question after friends asked her. "I told her that this young man ... was
unquestionably entitled to someone who would vigorously stand by him," he said. "Everyone has that right,
and so did he. It's what separates us from other countries, like those in the Middle East."

2/3

Even some fellow lawyers offered Aureli sympathy that he had drawn such a volatile case.
"Their general reaction was, 'Better you than me,'" he said.
Although Aureli has no regrets, he acknowledged that the circumstances of the case - and his awareness of the
impact it had on the Irondequoit couple and their daughter - were emotionally tolling.
"I'm not ashamed to admit that it wore me down," he said.
"People are savagely beaten, killed, pillaged, raped and robbed every day. But this case struck a nerve, not
only for me, but for the entire community."
MZEIGLER@DemocratandChronicle.com
50 years each
Don Peterkin and his brother, Rashad Peterkin, 18, were convicted after separate trials. Both were ordered to
prison for 50 years.

Text name: ABMG98QU_R1171514031.zip

Slug:
Topic:
Subject:
Keyword:
Type:
Geographic:
Art type:
Lawyer Daniel Aureli outside the courtroom after the sentencing of his client, Don
Art caption:
L. Peterkin, on Tuesday.
Proc:
Status:
Sent

3/3