A Woman Scorned: The Rita Gluzman Story

"Make a U-Turn"

Rosen was ecstatic. Sure, there was still a good chance that Rita Gluzman would face state charges in connection with her husband's death. But it would probably only be a charge of accessory to murder. For a guy like Rosen, who had made his name representing accused mobsters, that was hardly a daunting challenge. There were many ways he could deal with that when the time came.

For now, however, Rosen wanted to relish his victory.

"I'll never forget this is as long as I live," Rosen recalled in a recent interview. "I was on the FDR Drive, coming home, flushed with victory after having gotten her bail. I'm expecting her to be in the arms of her family."

Just then, he said, his cell phone rang. It was George Gabriel, a special agent for the FBI whom Rosen knew pretty well, having dealt with him in a half-dozen or so organized crime cases over the years.

"Mike," he said. "I hate to do this you, but you'd better make a U-turn."

White Plains, N.Y. Federal Court Building (White Plains Federal Court Sketch)

It was like a bullet between the eyes, Rosen would later say. The FBI agent had instructed Rosen to bring his client to the U.S. Federal Court Building in White Plains, N.Y. On the 40-minute ride north to White Plains, Rosen tried to figure out what was happening. The feds couldn't be planning to charge her with murder, he thought. That's a state crime. The federal government had no jurisdiction. It would certainly be too much of a stretch, even for ambitious federal prosecutors, to think that they could twist the federal racketeering statutes to cover the case. What did they have up their sleeves? Rosen wondered.

When he reached the modern steel and marble federal courthouse in downtown White Plains, he found out.

While he had been busy fighting to win bail for Gluzman, local authorities had been huddling with federal prosecutors and had come up with a unique way to prosecute her for her role in her husband's death.

In a four-page complaint, federal prosecutors charged her under the 1994 Domestic Violence Statute, a law popularly known as the Violence Against Women Act. It was a daring maneuver. The law, which allows the federal government to get involved when a person crosses state lines to commit an act of domestic violence, had been used only a few times before, and never against a woman.

But it provided the authorities with the clout they needed to prosecute Rita Gluzman. Specifically, it gave authorities the right to use Zelenin's testimony freely. They had already worked out a deal with the 40-year-old Russian immigrant in exchange for a lenient sentence and a pledge that his two teenage sons, both Russian-born, would be allowed to remain in the country while he was in jail.

It also provided a sentence that local and federal prosecutors could live with. Instead of facing a maximum of 15 years in prison, the best state prosecutors could have hoped for if they had been able to build a case, the federal domestic violence statute sets a penalty of life without parole when domestic violence turns deadly.