"I'd like the chance to look him in the eye and apologize, from the bottom of my heart," she said. "I see what we do in this court as a sacred trust. That might sound corny, but I truly believe it. I'm sorry for everything he had to go through."
I won't say DeAngelis had me offering to iron her robes by the time we got off the phone a half hour later. But she took some wind out of my sails.
I'd contacted the judge repeatedly before my column ran, to no avail, to ask if she had any comment on Harris' crazy situation. It had begun in 1991, when his twin brother, Edwin, racked up tickets with unpaid fines that now exceed $1,800.
But PennDOT continually confused the brothers, routinely sending to Edward, instead of Edwin, license-suspension notices for ticket nonpayment.
For 17 years - that's no typo - Edward made a mostly annual trek to Traffic Court to fight the notices. Each time, a judge would review Edward's case and notify PennDOT that the tickets weren't Edward's.
Until last November, that is, when Judge Willie Adams refused to look at paperwork that supported Edward's innocence.
Instead, he told him to start paying off the tickets, or go to jail.
That's when Harris contacted the Daily News, seeking help.
I still don't know what astounds me more: That it took Edward 17 years to get angry about PennDOT's constant screw-ups. Or that a sworn officer of the law forced him to pay for someone else's transgressions.
Thanks to Yahoo! - which picked up my story - Edward's tale elicited hundreds of responses from as far away as Australia. Many people had similarly hair-pulling stories about PennDOT.
