A federal jury convicted a former New York state judge Thursday of attempted extortion and attempted soliciting of a bribe for pressuring a lawyer to give $10,000 to his defense fund.

Federal prosecutors said Thomas Spargo pressured the lawyer, who had cases pending before Spargo when he was a state Supreme Court justice in 2003, to help the judge cover legal bills from an ongoing battle with the state’s judicial discipline committee.

“The jury system works whether you like it or not,” said Spargo, who had a long career as a Republican expert on New York elections law before becoming a judge. In 2000, he was part of GOP team that went to Florida to help battle for George W. Bush during the presidential election recount.

Spargo, who was elected to the state’s trial level court in 2001, could face up to 30 years in federal prison when he is sentenced Dec. 21.

He was removed from the bench in 2006 on the recommendation of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which cited the pressure he put on lawyers and which criticized some of his earlier actions as a town justice in suburban Albany.

“I think that Tom had been punished enough through the commission’s proceedings and the loss of his judgeship,” said E. Stewart Jones, Spargo’s lawyer. “This is overkill.”

He argued during trial there were big gaps in the prosecution case, including no mention of money in Spargo’s holiday phone call to Bruce Blatchly, the Ulster County lawyer who contacted authorities.

“You don’t check your common sense at the door,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Pilger told the jurors. He said Spargo called Blatchly to inform him he had a continuing assignment to Ulster County and that Blatchly’s own divorce case was assigned to a judge who was Spargo’s friend.

Source: AP Continue Reading This Article Here

Richard Aborn is continuing his unexpected surge of endorements in the race to succeed Robert Morgenthau as Manhattan district attorney, picking up the support of Catherine Abate and Richard Davis–two people who once wanted the job themselves.

Abate, a former state senator, state corrections commissioner and chair of the state crime victims board, whose elected career ended with a loss in the 1998 attorney general’s race to Eliot Spitzer. In the subsequent years, Abate’s name had frequently been mentioned as the likely preferred choice of Morgenthau to succeed him, when the time came. She did not, however, put together a campaign operation in advance of Morgenthau’s announced retirement, and the longtime district attorney instead swung his support behind Cyrus Vance, Jr. in his determined effort to keep former Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder from winning.

Source: City Hall News Continue Reading This Article Here

Governor David Paterson has appointed Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam to fill the seat in the state court’s Appellate Division.

She has been a Justice in the Supreme Court of New York since 1994, after serving two years as a Civil Court Judge in the city.

Abdus-Salaam also served as General Counsel to the City Division of Labor Services, and spent eight years as Assistant Attorney General.

Paterson says he is proud to nominate such an accomplished and respected jurist to the post, saying Abdus-Salaam’s experience and dedication will be a tremendous addition to New York’s courts.

Source: NY1

New York City paid out $567.9 million for personal injury, property damage and other law suits last year, a slight increase over the $558.3 million given out the year before, Comptroller William Thompson said yesterday.

NYPD settlements for false arrest, excessive force or assault — $35.2 million — were up 40 percent from 2007, the report found. New claims against the NYPD reached a historic high with last year’s 6,274. Claims against the city’s public hospitals dropped 17 percent in the same period, but medical malpractice still bleeds more money from the city’s coffers.

The 9,981 property damage claims filed last year were the most in a decade and mostly the result of sewer back ups and tree-damage from storms.

The Health and Hospitals Corporation, the Police Department and the Department of Transportation — account for about 61 percent of settlements in fiscal year 2008.

Source: Metro NY

Assistant District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior officially announced his candidacy Monday for the Manhattan DA’s office.

The 54-year-old said he would continue the office’s commitment to investigate and prosecute white collar crimes as well as work to keep the city’s streets safe.

Vance has been an assistant DA for 26 years.

In a statement, he says, “From years working as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I understand the impact of prosecutors’ decisions on victims, witnesses, members of law enforcement and those people accused of crime and their families. And my decisions will be guided by and better for that understanding.”

After 35 years in office, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced last month that he will not seek another term.

The 89-year-old has held the job since 1975 and has served as a prosecutor since the Kennedy administration.

Other possible candidates include former judge Leslie Crocker Snyder and Former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro.

Source: NY1

The United States Supreme Court rules against the city and victims of gun violence.

The court threw out a complaint seeking to revive lawsuits against the firearms industry, charging they knowingly sold guns that could be sold on illegal markets.

This puts an end to lawsuits first filed in 2000.

Federal appeals courts in New York and Washington threw out the complaints after Congress passed a law in 2005 giving the gun industry broad immunity against such lawsuits.

The city was not seeking monetary damages, just a court order for gun makers to more closely monitor dealers who frequently sell guns later used to commit crimes.

Source: NY1

After years of not getting any traction in the Senate, a proposal to place nickel bottle deposits on water and juice containers got its first public hearing in that house Wednesday.

For three of the past four years, the Democrat-led Assembly passed bills to expand the state’s 27-year-old 5-cent deposit law on soda, sparkling water, malt beverage and beer bottles and cans. The Senate did not take up the issue until this year, the first in which Democrats have controlled the chamber since 1965.

“It’s been known as the poster child for Albany’s dysfunction because it’s been bottled up in the Senate for so long,” said Laura Haight of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Business interests have fiercely opposed changing the law, which would require the deposit on non-carbonated beverages such as water, iced tea, juices and sports drinks. The expansion would be costly, take up too much space, threaten sanitary conditions and lead to higher costs for consumers, they said Wednesday.

Senate Environmental Conservation Committee Chairman Antoine Thompson, D-Buffalo, said after the hearing is confident a compromise agreement could be worked out and would recommend to Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, that negotiations be held, he said.

“I think there’s been a willingness to come together,” Thompson said, adding the legislation could be done before a budget is passed.

The New York Association of Convenience Stores said its members don’t have the room or resources to install vending machines for the returns, meaning employees would have to handle them manually, said James Calvin, president of the group.

Source: Poughkeepsie Journal

Democratic lawmakers and the governor are pushing changes in New York drug laws that would send more nonviolent drug offenders to probation and addiction treatment.

The Assembly scheduled a vote Wednesday on drug sentencing legislation that includes Speaker Sheldon Silver among dozens of co-sponsors. It would eliminate minimum required prison terms for lesser felonies, establish at least one drug court in every county and give judges more latitude to impose alternative sentences.

“For too long, this state has considered drug policy almost solely a criminal matter and not as the public health crisis that it is and has been,” Silver said at a drug treatment clinic in Albany last week. “Now it is up to the leaders of this state to do the smart thing, the humane thing, and break New York’s addiction to mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent offenders.”

The Senate’s Democratic majority will review that measure later Wednesday along with a similar proposal from Gov. David Paterson, said Austin Shafran, spokesman for Majority Leader Malcolm Smith. “We will do a side-by-side comparison on the Assembly and governor’s bills, determine our position and then build a consensus among the conference,” he said.

Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee, said there were provisions she liked in both measures. The governor, who advocated reforming the remaining so-called Rockefeller-era drug laws in his State of the State address, floated his draft legislative proposal among Democratic lawmakers Monday evening.

Its central provision would give judges discretion to divert nonviolent Class B and lesser felons to alternative programs, providing a basis for negotiations. An administration official said those negotiations were going very well.

“The question isn’t whether there will be reform, but what kind of reform,” said Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance. The concern of the alliance is that Paterson and the Senate will take a more centrist position than the Assembly, endorsing only limited revisions.

The Assembly bill would give judges discretion to sentence nonviolent Class B and lower felony first-time and repeat offenders to local jail, probation or a combination. Some could be sent to six-month military-style shock camp or the prison-run drug-treatment facility. Judges could approve prejudgment diversion drug-abuse programs and dismiss charges. Under current law, treatment programs can be ordered as a condition of probation.

There are about 12,000 prisoners in New York on drug convictions, 5,000 of them for personal possession only, Sayegh said. The Assembly measure would affect up to 6,000 prisoners who each cost the state about $45,000 a year, he said.

In 1973, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller engineered passage of drug laws that included 15 years to life in prison for a first conviction for selling one ounce or possessing two ounces of an illegal drug. Judges lost the ability to impose non-prison sentences for second felony offenders.

A special state Commission on Sentencing Reform noted that reforms in 2004 eliminated some of the harsher elements of the drug laws. Prosecutors and police have opposed further revisions, saying the tough laws have helped reduce crime and helped them prosecute gang members.

Source: AP

On a fall afternoon in 2002, the New York City police broke up a protest in front of Gov. George E. Pataki’s office in Midtown Manhattan and hauled a dozen demonstrators away.

The protesters were demanding that Mr. Pataki repeal the state’s 30-year-old drug sentencing laws, widely regarded as the nation’s most unforgiving. One of those placed in plastic handcuffs and carted off to a police station was a state senator named David A. Paterson.

Now, with Mr. Paterson in the governor’s mansion and Democrats in control of both houses of the State Legislature, an aggressive effort is under way to finally dismantle what remains of the stringent 1970s-era drug laws, which imposed stiff mandatory sentences as a way to combat the heroin epidemic then gripping New York City.

The Assembly is expected to pass legislation on Tuesday that would once again give judges the discretion to send those found guilty of having smaller amounts of illegal drugs to substance-abuse treatment instead of prison and allow thousands of inmates convicted of nonviolent drug offenses to apply to have their sentences reduced or commuted.

Meanwhile, the governor’s office is preparing legislation that it plans to present to Senate leaders on Monday that would also give judges discretion in sentencing, according to a senior administration official involved in drafting the bills. But for now, the governor is not taking a position on whether sentences should be reduced for some prisoners.

For its part, the Senate is expected to take up legislation in the coming weeks that would also be aimed at strengthening judges’ roles in sentencing.

“Returning discretion to judges is really the heart of where we want to go,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman who represents Queens and has led efforts to overturn the statutes, known as the Rockefeller drug laws because Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller made them a centerpiece of his agenda.

“When we take away those mandatory minimums and restore judicial discretion, that’s when you can say Rockefeller is no longer there,” Mr. Aubry said.

The State Legislature has already eliminated the stiffest provisions of the laws, doing away in 2004 with life sentences for drug crimes and reducing other penalties for the most serious offenses.

But now Democratic leaders see an opportunity to take aim at the judicial underpinnings of the laws by untying the hands of judges, who are often bound to mandatory minimum sentences even for less serious drug crimes.

As lawmakers debate changing the drug laws in the weeks ahead, restoring judicial discretion will be one of the thorniest issues in the discussions. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, said he thinks any plan that does not give judges authority to send drug offenders to treatment is doomed to fail.

“I think any bill that doesn’t provide that diversion option is really not something that’s significant reform, plain and simple,” Mr. Silver said in an interview. “There is nothing else at this point that would be meaningful in terms of reform.”

But the idea of restoring full judicial discretion is troubling to many prosecutors, who in a vast majority of drug crimes must give consent before a suspect is ordered to a treatment program.

“The district attorney’s input would be taken out of the equation,” said Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City. “When I look at cases, I want to have the discretion as gatekeeper, to make sure that somebody I put back out in the community is not going to pose a public safety threat. A district attorney has a much clearer picture of a community’s concerns.”

But under the plans favored by the governor, the Assembly and the Senate, prosecutors would lose that veto power.

Senate Republicans, who hold 30 out of the 62 seats in the chamber and could block a bill that they deem too lenient by recruiting just one Democrat, are concerned about any drug laws that would allow offenders to use treatment as a get-out-of-jail-free option.

“We can give judges more latitude, but we have to make sure there’s someplace for drug felons to go, and that they don’t just walk out,” said Senator Dale Volker, who represents a district outside Buffalo and who led the Senate committee that oversaw the changes to the Rockefeller laws in 2004.

“There are a lot of questions to be answered,” Mr. Volker said. “How will these people stay in treatment? Will they just end up back on the street?”

The lack of what those involved in criminal justice considered successful treatment programs led Rockefeller to seek life sentences for the most serious drug offenses. Though Rockefeller initially helped build one of the most extensive state treatment programs in the nation, he became exasperated as drug felons slipped through the cracks and New York’s drug epidemic only grew worse.

“By 1973, Rocky was disgusted and frustrated,” said Pamala Griset, an associate professor of criminal justice and legal studies at the University of Central Florida. “So what he proposed was a 180-degree turnaround from the rehabilitative sentencing structure he first favored.”

Beyond undoing the last of the Rockefeller-era laws, those supporting the reforms being shaped in Albany say, New York should establish a treatment program that serves as a national model different from the one the state created 35 years ago, when the laws became the impetus for a nationwide movement toward extended mandatory drug sentences.

“This is an opportunity to reduce the number of people who are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses,” said Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat who represents Upper Manhattan and the Bronx and is sponsoring legislation to repeal parts of the state’s drug sentencing code. “And frankly, it is an opportunity to shift the framework of drug policy in America from a model centered on incarceration.”

One possibility, favored by the governor, would be to include Rockefeller drug law reform in the budget negotiations, which under state law must be completed by April 1.

Regardless of when it happens, advocates of overhauling the drug laws say this is an opportunity that should not be squandered.

“I’ve been hanging around there at the Capitol trying to make changes to these laws all my life,” said the Rev. Peter Young, who directs a statewide drug rehabilitation program. “Now we have the best shot of any year I’ve seen.”

Source: NY Times

The state Commission on Judicial Nomination recommended seven candidates to Governor David A. Paterson Monday as possible successors to Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, including two current members of the Court of Appeals and three private practitioners with no prior judicial experience.

In a surprise, the commission did not nominate Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, an associate judge on the Court of Appeals since 1993 and, next to Chief Judge Kaye, the most senior member of the Court. Judge Ciparick was reappointed last year by then-Governor Eliot Spitzer and her term on the Court will run out at the end of 2012, when she reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Court of Appeals Judges Theodore T. Jones Jr. and Eugene F. Pigott Jr. were on the commission’s list as was Jonathan Lippman, the former chief state administrative judge who is now presiding justice of the Appellate Division, First Department.

Justice Steven W. Fisher of the Appellate Division, Second Department, also made the final list.

Private practitioners George F. Carpinello of Boies, Schiller & Flexner in Albany; Evan A. Davis of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Peter L. Zimroth of Arnold & Porter were the other nominees to succeed Chief Judge Kaye once she concludes her record 15-plus years as chief judge due to state mandatory requirement rules on Dec. 31.

Mr. Paterson, a first-year Democratic governor, must make his selection from the commission’s list between Jan. 1 and Jan. 15. His choice then goes for confirmation to the state Senate, which has never balked at approving a gubernatorial nominee to the Court of Appeals since the current appointive system was adopted in 1977.

By law, the commission must give the governor seven nominees for the chief judge’s opening. It sorts through the applications it receives in secret, interviews candidates behind closed doors and does not explain why candidates are included in the final list or left off.

In a brief letter to Mr. Paterson, commission Chairman John F. O’Mara wrote that the seven candidates are “well-qualified” due to “their character, temperament, professional aptitude, experience, qualifications and fitness for office, to discharge the duties of that high office” as spelled out by the commission’s rules.

Mr. Mara, a partner at Davidson & O’Mara in Elmira, is an appointee of former Republican Governor George Pataki. Mr. Paterson had one appointee to the judicial nominating committee, Long Island lawyer Frederick K. Brewington.

The other 10 members of the commission were appointed by Mr. Pataki, Chief Judge Kaye and the majority and minority leaders of the Legislature. By statute, four of the commission’s 12 members are not attorneys.

Stephen P. Younger, partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, is counsel to the commission.

Mr. Paterson’s office had no immediate comment.

All four judges on the list have court administrative experience, led by Justice Lippman, the longest-serving chief state administrative judge from 1996-2007 before his appointment to the First Department bench last year.

Judge Pigott was presiding justice of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department for four years before being appointed to the Court of Appeals in 2006 by Mr. Pataki.

Judge Jones, a 2007 selection to the Court of Appeals by Mr. Spitzer, was chief administrator for Brooklyn state Supreme Court, civil term, in 2006 and 2007. Justice Fisher was administrative judge for Supreme Court in Queens from 1998-2004. He was selected by Mr. Pataki to the Second Department in 2004.

Justice Fisher previously made commission lists for associate judgeship openings on the Court in 2000, 2002, 2003 and twice in 2006.

Mr. Carpinello, the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Civil Practice since 1985, also made previous lists in 2006 and twice in 2007.

Mr. Davis, a one-time counsel to Governor Mario Cuomo, and Mr. Zimroth, corporation counsel in New York City from 1987-89, both made commission lists for the Court of Appeals for the first time. Mr. Zimroth has been director of the Capital Defender Office since 2000.

Source: New York Law Journal