By Joyce Kryszak
Cheektowaga, NY – Cheektowaga's Deer Lady begins a sentence of community service Monday feeding humans instead of deer. The sentence may mark the end of Anita Depczynski's fight to save wildlife in Stiglemeier Park.
Last week, Depczynski says she walked into an Amherst court room thinking she would have a chance to argue her case. She was in court for violating an earlier conditional discharge barring her from feeding the deer in Stiglemeier park. But with evidence and previous lost appeals stacked up against her, her attorney Andrew LoTempio says there was little to argue.
"It doesn't have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt," LoTempio said. "The standard is a lot lower."
After a heated courtroom scene, he persuaded Depczynski to reluctantly take a plea agreement. She will serve 100 hours in a soup kitchen and is barred from all Cheektowaga parks, including Stiglemeier the one she fought so hard and long to protect. Depczynski says the system has finally beaten her.
"They have put me through the ringer," Depczynski said. "You know what? They won. The main thing for them was to get me out of Stiglemeier Park, to get me out of their way."
Her attorney says he, too, feels defeated. LoTempio says when he took the case, without pay, he thought he'd be able to present legal arguments advancing Depczynski's efforts to preserve wildlife and green space in the town. But LoTempio says, both inside and outside the courtroom, the cause has been lost.
"Unfortunately, the attention it's gotten has been more on the personality of Ms. Depczynski and the Deer Lady persona," LoTemptio said. "My ultimate goal was to bring attention to the fact a family left this farmland to the Town of Cheektowaga with the intention of leaving it a nature preserve. Because of money, people are selling it off to make strip malls."
Depczynski still has one case pending from another violation, where she is being represented by a public defender. A venue for that case has not yet been decided.
In the meantime, Depczynski begins serving meals to people at a soup kitchen, not far from Stiglemeier Park.