NYCBA Members Newsletter

Welcome to the January 2006 issue of our Newsletter.

President's Message:

Happy New Year to all! As we start 2006, we can be very thankful that New York is still death-penalty free. The special session called by Governor Pataki in December 2005 to consider death penalty legislation and increased penalties for guns resulted only in legislation on the latter without even a vote on the death penalty in the Senate (which had previously passed a capital punishment bill after the Court of Appeals' LaValle decision in mid-2004). And, the Governor's January 2006 State of the State speech notably omitted any mention of the death penalty.

A priority for this legislative session is expanded reform of the Rockefeller drug laws. Please let me know if you are interested in working on this issue.

The debate over extension of the PATRIOT Act will apparently resume shortly, as the result of the December 2005 controversy was a 5-week extension to early February.

If you are not familiar with the NYCBA Website, please consider exploring it, because it contains many valuable and useful links. For example, under the Court Websites link, there is a complete Judicial Directory of all the trial judges in New York State, which includes their telephone numbers and addresses. Under Telephone Directories, you can find the addresses and phone numbers of all the Police Precincts in New York City; and all the current Arraignment Phone Numbers in New York City; and all the District Attorneys' Offices.

If you have a trial coming up, especially a federal trial, please keep in mind my suggestion in the December 2005 newsletter that about "second-seating." Please let me know (preferably by email) if you are interested in taking or being a "second-seater."

Annual Dues:

As a reminder, 2006 membership dues to the New York Criminal Bar Association were due on January 1st.  If you have not already paid your membership dues, please do so immediately. 

The cost of this year's dues is $100. Payments may be made by sending your check, made payable to the “New York Criminal Bar Association,” to Michael K. Bachrach, NYCBA Treasurer, 1040 Avenue of the Americas, 24th Floor, New York, New York, 10018. 

Payments may also be made by faxing or emailing your credit card authorization to Mr. Bachrach at (866) 328-1630 or mbach2000@yahoo.com, or by submitting your credit card information online at our website.  To make your payments online, go to www.nycrimbar.org, then click on the “Events” button and follow the prompts.  Alternately, if you have already logged into the Members Section of our website, simply select “Events” from the “Members Info” drop-down tab, and follow those prompts. 

If you have any questions regarding membership dues please call Michael at (212) 382-4621, or email him at the above email address.  A copy of our Membership Application/Renewal Form is attached to this newsletter for your convenience.

Save  The  Date: 

Our Annual Dinner at the Tavern on the Green will be held this year on Monday, June 5, 2006. Please note the date in your calendars.

CJA Fees Go Up Slightly:

As set forth in the attached Notice from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the hourly compensation rates for attorneys working on CJA matters have increased, effective January 1, 2006, from $90 per hour to $92 per hour.

There is also a slight increase, from $160 to $163 per hour, for attorneys working on Federal capital prosecutions and capital post-conviction proceedings.

While on the subject of CJA fees, it has been brought to our attention that there is an excellent billing program now available that is specifically designed for use with the CJA-20 voucher form.  The cost of the program is $79.95 and is available at www.lawfirmsoftware.com/software/cja.htm or by calling 1-800-350-8262.  There are currently no plans to expand to program for use with the CJA-30 form used for capital cases; however, at least for non-capital CJA billing, the program can be of great assistance.

More On The Samuel Alito Nomination:

Although it now appears that the appointment of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court is a fait accompli, we continue to note some resources relevant to his nomination:

• The FindLaw Website has some of the most comprehensive coverage of Judge Alito's background at http://news.findlaw.com/newsmakers/samuel.alito.html#docs
  
  
  
• "How Alito would shift high court on key issues," by Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 6, 2006.
  
  
  
• "Alito foes consider presidential powers the defining issue," by Charlie Savage and Rick Klein, Boston Globe, Jan. 6, 2006; and "Our Presidential Era: Who Can Check The President?," by Noah Feldman, The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 8, 2006.
  
  
  
• The National Association of Women Lawyers ("NAWL") has evaluated Judge Alito and has determined that he "is not qualified to serve on the Court from the perspective of laws and decisions regarding women's rights or that have a special impact on women."
  
  
  
• The organization known as People for the American Way is strongly opposed to the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court; and it has published a provocative 155-page Report entitled "The Record and Legal Philosophy of Samuel Alito: 'No One to the Right of Sam Alito on this Court'." A copy of the Executive Summary of that Report is available at www.savethecourt.org

NYCBA Web Site Features:

Each month, we try to point out some of the latest resources that we have posted on our Website at www.nycrimbar.org/. In keeping with that tradition, we note the following items:

• We have posted under the "Decisions" button a copy of Judge Smith's recent decision in People v. Andrew Goldstein, No. 155 (New York State Court of Appeals, December 20, 2005) (2005 N.Y. LEXIS 3389) - which is an important Confrontation Clause ruling. The defendant in that notorious case, Andrew Goldstein, pushed a woman he did not know to her death in front of an approaching subway train. Goldstein raised a defense of insanity, and in response the state presented the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist, Angela Hegarty, who testified that in her opinion Goldstein was responsible for his actions. Hegarty relied in substantial part on statements made to her by others, and the trial court admitted these statements.
  
  
  After the Appellate Division affirmed, the Court of Appeals reversed - even though if found "no New York case addressing the question of when a party offering a psychiatrist's opinion ... may present, through the expert, otherwise inadmissible information on which the expert relied." Writing for the Court, Judge Smith held that the admission of Hegarty's testimony, which recounted statements of interviewees, constituted a violation of Goldstein's rights under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause as interpreted in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), and under Art. 1, § 6 of the New York State Constitution. The Court noted that the Confrontation Clause generally prohibits the use of "testimonial" hearsay against a defendant unless the defendant had a chance to cross-examine the declarant. Here, the Court of Appeals held that the statements were hearsay, as they were offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, that defendant was not insane. The statements were testimonial, as the statements should reasonably have been expected to be used prosecutorially or to be available for use at a later trial. Thus, the conviction was reversed and a new trial was ordered.
  
  
  
• We have also posted under the Decisions button a copy of the decision by Judge Morse of the City Court of Rochester in the case entitled People v. Rose, 2005 N.Y. Slip. Op. 25526 (Dec. 9, 2005). The decision purports to be the first reported case in New York on the validity of prosecutions based on computer generated tickets ("e-tickets") rather than the "multi-copy handwritten simplified traffic informations used for decades across New York State."
  
  
  
• On the What's New section of our Website, we have posted an article entitled "Criminal Law and Procedure," by Prof. Abraham Abramovsky, that was published in the New York Law Journal, Jan. 9, 2006.
  
  
  
• We have also posted on the What's New section of our Website an article entitled "State Bar Task Force to Address Waiver of Privilege," by John Caher, that was published in the New York Law Journal, Jan. 10, 2006, in which Mr. Caher discussed the inherent "threat to the attorney-client privilege" that is arising from the growing practice of state and federal prosecutors that requires corporate defendants to waive the attorney-client privilege as part of a plea bargain.
  
  
  
• Finally, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Booker, we have posted a copy of an article entitled "Sentencing Guidelines" by Alan Vinegrad and Douglas Bloom, that was published in the New York Law Journal, Jan. 13, 2005.
  
  

News From the Web

• Need help finding your way around the New York Subway system? Now, HopStop.com offers a free service where you can get subway directions from your cell phone. Go to Hopstop Mobile Services at http://www.hopstop.com/member?action=register&sid=
  
  
  
• The Washington Post has created a new Votes Database which lets you browse every vote in the United States Congress since 1991. The site provides statistics for each House and Senate member. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for every member of Congress (so you can be notified each time he/she votes), or for the 10 most recent votes.
  
  
  
• Do you occasionally have a long message you want to send but you don't have the time to type it? Try using WaxMail, a program that records your message in MP3 format and then attaches it to an Outlook or Outlook Express message. And it's free, too.
  
  
  

Comments and Newsletter Contributions Welcome

Comments on this and future issues of this Newsletter are most welcome, as are your own stories about cases, issues, arguments, events. etc. - whether just a sentence or a paragraph to alert us to a recent development, or a longer piece. Please send your material to Scott Tulman, Chair of the Internet and Newsletter Committee at Tel.: (212) 867-3600 or email: stulman@aol.com - or send your comments by email directly to our committee at: nycrimbar@nyc.rr.com.

Yours for a better defense,

Henry J. Steinglass
President
(212) 406-7700

Internet and Newsletter Committee:
Scott Tulman, Chair
Harvey Fishbein
Michael K. Bachrach
Peter G. Schmidt