By Patrick Lakamp
The Buffalo News, N.Y.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — For 13 years, David A. Gambino waited for his day in court to tell jurors how he believed the Niagara County Jail served him contaminated kosher meals, in violation of his First Amendment religious rights.
“It means the world to me,” Gambino, 51, told jurors of Judaism, recalling in testimony last week how he converted while in custody. “It’s my foundation, clarity and moral structure.”
Jurors didn’t buy it.
They deliberated about 2½ hours before ruling against him Monday in U.S. District Court.
In their verdict form, jurors said Gambino’s request for a kosher diet was not based upon a sincerely held religious faith.
“The jury clearly and correctly based its decision on their belief he was not credible, particularly in comparison to the corrections officers,” said attorney Ted Graney , who represented Niagara County and seven current or past jail employees named in Gambino’s lawsuit.
Attorney Sean M O’Brien, who represented Gambino, told jurors Judaism became “a central part” of the ex-inmate’s life.
“He prays. He eats kosher. He studies religion,” said O’Brien, who was appointed by the court to serve as Gambino’s pro bono counsel.
“Each and every American citizen has constitutional rights. Mr. Gambino is no different,” O’Brien said.
Graney, however, described the lawsuit as filled with false and exaggerated accusations from “a disgruntled inmate.” Gambino alleged his kosher meals were contaminated some 200 times during a three-month stretch in 2012, but he could not identify anyone who supposedly tampered with his food, Graney said.
Gambino was seen trading his kosher food with other inmates and eating food from other inmates’ trays, Graney said.
Graney questioned Gambino’s religious practice by asking him about not complying with a kosher diet after his jail stay, by his social media posts of preparing nonkosher food and by not belonging to a synagogue.
Graney showed jurors Gambino’s Facebook posts showing “bachelor stovetop” meals made from leftovers that were not kosher.
During the trial, Gambino testified that he is vegan, “probably the chubbiest vegan you’ll ever meet.”
“No one here is going to argue just because you’re in jail you’re not entitled to your religious belief,” Graney told jurors. “That religious belief needs to be sincere.”
Graney, in a court filing, said the evidence showed Gambino’s “lack of integrity, credibility, and veracity, but also to a pattern of conduct showing that he picks and chooses both which religion he identifies with and how he practices that religion, all in his convenience and to fit his whims.”
Gambino was held for nearly 28 months by the U.S. Marshals service at the Niagara County Jail until his transfer in June 2012. After leaving the Niagara County facility, he stopped following a kosher diet while in federal prison through 2020 for his convictions of drug-related continual criminal enterprise and money laundering, according to court filings.
Gambino was arrested in 2009 for conspiring with others to smuggle marijuana from Canada into the United States and cocaine from the United States into Canada, according to his 2011 plea agreement.
In August 2011 at the Niagara County Jail, Gambino requested the jail change his classification to Muslim, which the jail did.
Gambino said he had to ask for the Muslim classification in order to sign up to talk to an imam who visited the jail.
After speaking with the imam, he realized “my ideas are more Jewish than anything.”
So in March 2012, he requested the jail change his classification to Jewish and to provide him with a kosher diet. That request was also granted, and he began receiving kosher meals.
But Gambino testified he routinely received “smashed, rotten food in a bag that fell apart.”
The trays were not properly cleaned, and the meals were soggy from liquids being spilled on them. He found hair in some meals.
Gambino, in previous testimony, said the jail put other food on his tray like pork, which he would not be permitted to eat if he was following a strict kosher diet.
After filing a written complaint, “my meals started, basically, being breakfast, lunch, and dinner about a two-inch thick chunk of cheese and two pieces of bread,” he said.
He said he would trade some of the cheese for vegetables, or “I would go without, and I’d be hungry.”
That went on for weeks, he said. After he complained, “I had my room attacked, was told to get away from the desk plenty of times, and it just went on for quite a while.”
“I was treated like I was the worst person in the jail,” he told jurors.
He said he went hungry, lost weight and was in pain.
Gambino filed dozens of complaints and grievances during his time at the jail – about more than food.
He complained of privacy violations over the jail’s showers and claimed the jail staff was indifferent to his medical, mental health and dental needs.
The corrections officers named in the lawsuit disputed his allegations that they mocked him over his weight and religious beliefs.
Since filing the lawsuit in 2012, most of his claims have been dismissed, leaving the kosher food claim the only claim that was tried.
O’Brien did not specify to jurors how much Gambino sought in damages. But in a trial memo filed with the court, he indicated Gambino wanted $100,000 in compensatory damages and another $100,000 in punitive damages – none of which the jury awarded.
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