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News Picks from NYSDA Staff

September 17, 2024

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News Picks

Updated Discovery Guide Available

The Legal Aid Society has updated its guide, CPL 245 “Discovery” – Issues and Advocacy. This September 2024 version includes 68 pages of new analysis, issues, updated case law, and more; like the original, it contains information on CPL 30.30 speedy trial issues. The update has been posted on NYSDA’s Discovery Reform Implementation webpage. NYSDA thanks John Schoeffel, Peter Mitchell, and LAS for sharing this valuable resource with the public defense community!

 

Court of Appeals Issues Mixed Decision on “Community Caretaking” Automobile Stops

In May, the Court of Appeals issued People v Brown (2024 NY Slip Op 02765), an ambivalent decision dismissing criminal charges based on an unlawful car stop. An officer testified that he stopped Mr. Brown’s car because he thought someone might need help after seeing the passenger side door quickly open and close but admitted the car had not committed any traffic violations, and he could neither see nor hear any passenger in need of assistance. During the stop, officers found ecstasy in the car and arrested Mr. Brown, who later pleaded to disorderly conduct.

 

Brown creates a two-part test for such a “community caretaking” automobile stop. First, there must be specific, objective, and articulable facts that would lead a reasonable officer to conclude that an occupant needs assistance. Second, the subsequent intrusion must be narrowly tailored to address the perceived need for assistance.

 

The calculus resets to traditional search and seizure jurisprudence once the help has either been offered or the officer realizes no help is necessary: “Once assistance has been provided and the peril mitigated, or the perceived need for assistance has been dispelled, any further police action must be justified under the Fourth Amendment and Article I, section 12 of the State Constitution.” So, for an automobile stop based on “community caretaking” to continue past “what is necessary to ascertain whether an occupant needs aid requires at least reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.” [Citations omitted.]

 

In the specifics of Mr. Brown’s police interaction, the Court found that the stop failed the first prong of their test – a car door opening and closing once is not enough to cause a reasonable officer to believe that assistance was necessary.

 

The Second Department applied the Brown test in a case this July and came to similar conclusions. In People v Serrano (229 AD3d 642), officers testified that the reason for the stop was a car’s flashing its high beams several times. Although they determined there was nobody in need of assistance, officers continued asking Mr. Serrano questions, and he eventually failed a field sobriety test. The court determined that while the stop was justified under Brown’s first prong, it failed the second. Once officers determined there was nobody in distress, but continued asking questions, the stop was no longer narrowly tailored to the need for assistance.

 

While both cases are ultimately wins for Messrs. Brown and Serrano, the Court of Appeal’s creation of the test more broadly is problematic. Prior to Brown, there had been no cognizable “community caretaking” doctrine for police stops. While it had been applied to police towing vehicles – and subsequent inventory searches – as a “community caretaking” function, it had never applied in New York under a “public safety” function to a moving vehicle. While the test itself may be narrowly tailored – and the first two decisions under it resulted in suppression – the creation of yet another codified Fourth Amendment exception is concerning.

 

Motions to Vacate: An Excellent Tool to Relieve Clients from Default Orders in Family Court Cases

The Second Department recently reminded us about the often forgotten but important remedy of filing a motion to vacate to relieve a parent from an order entered on default. In Matter of Paez v Bambauer (2024 NY Slip Op 04205), the Rockland County Family Court had refused to vacate a custody order flipping custody from the mother to the father, when the mother failed to appear for a court appearance. In reversing the lower court, the Second Department found that the court improvidently exercised its discretion by refusing to grant the mother’s motion to vacate. The court continued that although the decision regarding whether to relieve a party of default is in the sole discretion of the court, “the law favors resolution on the merits in child custody proceedings." It is also important to remember that in any custody case, the court must be satisfied that the custody arrangement is in the best interests of the child. “‘A custody determination, whether made upon the default of a party or not, must always have a sound and substantial basis in the record.’” [Citations omitted.] Defenders with questions about motions to vacate or any other family court issue can reach out to Family Court Staff Attorney Kim Bode at kbode@nysda.org. Defenders are also welcome to visit NYSDA’s family defense sample motion bank.

 

Bill Signed: Public Employees to Get Notice of Requests for Records

Despite opposition from good government groups, including the League of Women Voters and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Governor Hochul has signed a bill requiring that state employees be notified of Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests for their disciplinary records. As reported on NYStateOfPolitics.com, the NYCLU and others fear that the requirement will erode the intent and effect of the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50-a regarding law enforcement disciplinary records by making FOIL requests for those records too burdensome. Supporters of the new law included the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, according to an item from The Citizen (Auburn, NY).The bill, S. 5500/A. 6146 (L 2024 ch 302), amends Public Officers Law 87 by adding language requiring agencies subject to FOIL to “develop a policy regarding providing a notification to public employees in the event that the agency is responding to a request for such employee's disciplinary records.” The law is effective immediately.

 

NYSDA works to keep defenders and others apprised of the use of FOIL to secure law enforcement (and other) records. Watch for updates on the effects of this new legislation.

 

Hochul Signs Bills Adding Counties to Virtual Appearance Law

Recently-signed bills added five more counties, Monroe, Oswego, and Delaware, Otsego, and Schoharie, to CPL 182.20. That statute allows a court to “dispense with the personal appearance of the defendant, except an appearance at a hearing or trial, and conduct an electronic appearance in connection with a criminal action pending in” (now 42) named counties (including all 5 in New York City) when “the chief administrator of the courts has authorized the use of electronic appearance” and when "the defendant, after consultation with counsel, consents on the record.” In addition to defense consent, the statue seeks to protect defendants by saying that virtual appearances shall not be held if they “may impair the legal rights of the defendant” and either party can request to terminate the virtual proceeding and have the matter adjourned.

 

The statute also contains directives that there are to be no recordings of electronic appearances except as authorized by the chief administrator’s rules. Those rules are in 22 NYCRR Part 106. The Unified Court System has posted information for the public about virtual proceedings—including the bar to recording them in any way, including screen shots. See also the Rules of the Chief Judge about electronic recording and audio visual coverage (Part 29) and Rules of the Chief Administrative Judge on audio-visual coverage (Part 131), which NYSDA has argued violate Civil Rights Law 52 and Courtroom Television Network LLC v State of New York, 5 NY3d 222 (2005).

 

Clients’ rights may not be paramount in the minds and comments of officials pushing for virtual proceedings. Quotes in an article on OswegoCountyToday.com, like this from the Chair of the county legislature, focused elsewhere: “’[b]eing able to use video appearances in certain circumstances will not only help improve the efficiency of some of our departments in relation to state and local court processes, but it will also help save taxpayer dollars – always a priority for the Legislature.’” It is up to defenders to ensure that the statutory protections are not ignored to save costs. While appearing remotely for some routine appearances may work best for a client, their interests should never be ignored. NYSDA’s 2020 statement on virtual appearances at every critical stage stands: “[i]n-person, physical presence of the person who is the subject of court proceedings remains vital to ensuring constitutional and human rights.”

 

Drug Use Allegations in Family Court: It's Complicated

The Marshall Project recently published an online article entitled She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away. The title says it all. The article brings to the forefront a systemic problem that regularly turns the happy occasion of giving birth into the nightmare of having a family ripped apart based on false positive drug tests. “The harms of drug testing fall disproportionately on low-income, Black, Hispanic and Native American women, who studies have found are more likely to be tested when they give birth, more likely to be investigated, and less likely to reunite with their children after they’ve been removed. But the false-positive cases The Marshall Project identified include parents of all socioeconomic classes and occupations — from a lawyer to a school librarian to a nurse who drug tests other people for a living.”

NYSDA reminds family defenders not to be complacent when representing clients charged with drug-related neglect. The law in NY is very clear that it takes more than a positive drug test or an allegation that a parent has used or possessed drugs to establish a neglect. We encourage family defenders to read Matter of Jefferson C.-A. (227 AD3d 894 [2d Dept 2024]) for a thorough discussion of the law related to drug use neglect. Additionally, defenders are urged to be diligent and not to take positive drug tests at face value. NYSDA’s Discovery and Forensic Support Unit and our Family Court Staff Attorney are available for consultation at info@nysda.org.

 

NeuroLaw Library Announced

The Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, based out of Massachusetts General Hospital (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School), has launched its NeuroLaw Library, described in an announcement as “the nation’s first information resource dedicated to fairer, more effective science-informed judicial outcomes.” It is said to be a “free, open access repository for those involved in the juvenile and adult criminal justice system in need of accurate and applicable neuroscience resources” that is designed for use by those in many different roles – “defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, probation and parole officers, advocates, incarcerated persons and their families ….” The range of materials may be helpful in policy work or litigation.

 

The first of five planned multimedia courses, called “modules” in the announcement, is titled Understanding Adolescence in the Legal System. It is intended to let site visitors “delve into the complexities of adolescent development and its intersection with the criminal” legal system. Lessons within this course include Positive Youth Development, Working with Forensic Experts, and The Effects of Incarceration on Children and Late Adolescents.

 

Other resources in the library include an article entitled Adolescents Engage in More Risky Decision Making. It discusses topics like “The Vast Majority of Adolescents Desist from Crime by Age 25” and “Diversion is Related to Lower Recidivism and Better Outcomes than Formal Processing” that might help attorneys formulate plea negotiations and sentencing advocacy for young clients, including so-called “emerging adults” (older teens and those up to 25 years’ old).

 

One feature of the website is a “comprehension” scale appearing to the left side of written material. It allows viewing of the original language of the document or machine learning model versions for different reading levels, in acknowledgement of the range of possible users. The three long paragraphs of a section on desisting from crime by age 25 include original language like this: “in a study of over 1,000 participants ranging in age from 12 to 48 years, impulsivity declined, the ability to think long term increased, and individuals engaged in more responsible decision making as they transitioned out of adolescence and into adulthood.” At the lowest level (Summary), the entire section reads: “[a]s teens grow up, they learn from their mistakes and start to make better decisions. By the time they are 25, most teens have stopped doing things that are against the law.”

 

The new NeuroLaw Library will not substitute for deep dives into neuroscience by attorneys and their experts in appropriate cases. NYSDA’s Discovery and Forensic Support Unit offers suggestions for relevant experts for evaluation and litigation. Email forensics@nysda.org. You can find a link to the NeuroLaw Library and other resources on NYSDA’s Forensics webpage under “Other Resources and Training.”

 

ShotSpotter, a/k/a SoundThinking: Inaccurate and a Continuing Privacy Threat

The gunshot detection system ShotSpotter, rebranded as SoundThinking, continues to be a matter of concern. See the May 28, 2021, edition of News Picks and the July-Oct. 2023 issue of the Backup Center REPORT for some examples. This June, a New York City Comptroller audit raised more questions about the system’s accuracy. The audit found that during sampled months in 2022 and 2023, “ShotSpotter alerts only resulted in confirmed shootings between 8% and 20% of the time.” While the police disagreed that this measure matters, focusing instead on assertions that ShotSpotter greatly improved response time to possible shots fired, the audit determined that the claims of improvement in response time were exaggerated. “The audit found that NYPD’s data collection should be improved, analyzed more critically, and published in the interest of transparency before ShotSpotter’s contract, which expires in December 2024, is renewed,” according to the announcement of the audit.

 

Even if the City does not renew its contract with SoundThinking, concerns remain. A collaborative article by SouthsideWeekly.com and Wired recently asserted that “[c]onfidential company emails … indicate that the company never completely pulled its technology out of some cities” when contracts ended. This may be cause for continuing worry about racially disparate oversurveillance, given that the system has long “drawn criticism from activists and academics who believe” that SoundThinking “places its microphone sensors primarily in low-income communities of color,” and evidence that “[m]ore than 12 million Americans live in neighborhoods with at least one ShotSpotter sensor,” according to a February 22nd Wired release. And even if the system is pulled, concerns about both accuracy and discrimination may arise in cases involving police interactions with clients that began as a result of ShotSpotter notifications while the contract was in effect.

 

Ethics Opinion Finds “No Recording Clauses” Permissible in Engagement Letters

The New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics published a new opinion regarding attorneys placing recording prohibitions in representation paperwork. Opinion 1270 finds that a “No Recording Clause” may be placed in retainer agreements or engagement letters, and that an attorney may withdraw their representation based on a violation of the clause, so long as the attorney does not “mislead the client into believing that the lawyer will have unfettered discretion to withdraw based on the No Recording Clause in the letter of engagement if the client breaches that clause.”

 

In coming to their conclusion, the Committee analyzed Rule 1.16 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct and determined that since the Rules as a whole are silent on recording clauses, they are generally allowed. However, withdrawing from a case based on client’s violation of the clause is not mandatory; “[w]hether the client’s breach rises to a level justifying the lawyer’s withdrawal will be a case-by-case inquiry.” Pursuant to 1.16(d) and (e), part of that inquiry must be conducted by the court itself, and the opinion notes that a “a client’s single, inadvertent, or immaterial violation” of the clause is unlikely to be determined to warrant good cause for withdrawal.

 

Public Defenders’ Perception of Race and Bias Surveyed

The Center for Justice Innovation has released Public Defense Attorneys’ Perception of Race and Bias. Analyzing a national survey that garnered 690 responses from attorneys who provide public defense representation, the brief says findings include: 

  • Public defense attorneys recognize racial disparities in the legal system and adapt their strategies accordingly;
  • There are differences between how white and BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] attorneys interact with clients and approach cases—white attorneys find race can hinder building relationships with BIPOC clients, while Black attorneys adjust strategies more for BIPOC clients compared to white clients;
  • Clients have limited opportunities to indicate their race or request representation by a same-race attorney; and
  • Systemic disparities, such as a lack of diversity among public defense attorneys, limited opportunities for dialogue, and instances of racism in the office, particularly affect BIPOC attorneys. 

The brief acknowledges limitations to the study, such as the nature of surveys (lack of depth in providing explanations for what is found); the nature of “convenience sampling” that potentially limits representation of the broader field, and possible selection bias, including “a potential lack of participation from those who prefer not to discuss race.” Further briefs are expected.

 

NYSDA encourages public defenders to learn about race and bias and how these issues may be affecting them, their clients, and the representation they provide.

 

Dr. Alice Green’s Death a Loss for Justice

People and organizations across the Capital Region and beyond lost a champion for justice on August 20th when Dr. Alice P. Green died unexpectedly. Well-known for her work as the Executive Director of the Center for Law and Justice (CFLJ), which she founded in 1985, she served in many other roles as well. NYSDA posted a statement on Twitter/X and Facebook recognizing Dr. Green’s many contributions, including her 15 years on NYSDA’s Client Advisory Board and 2 years on our Board of Directors. The statement ends, “[t]hank you, Alice. Your memory will help us continue the fight against racism and inequity, and for fair and just treatment for all people.”

 

Many others noted Dr. Green’s passing and legacy. A Times Union article noted that “prison reform and improving the lives of those who exited the state’s prison system were just two of the many causes she championed in her career as a teacher, social worker, state employee, author and” CFLJ founder. WAMC rightly called her a “civil rights icon”; while much of her life’s work focused on harms done by the criminal legal system, she fought racism in many forms and places. For example, she “joined in the growing global struggle against apartheid in Africa,” as she noted in her memoir, We Who Believe in Freedom: Activism and the Struggle for Social Justice. Her writings included that memoir and a more recent one (Outsider: Stories of Growing Up Black in the Adirondacks); a series of three 2012 reports examining the impact of federal, state and local criminal justice system practices on minorities in the Capital Region; and Wicked Albany: Lawlessness & Liquor in the Prohibition Era, co-written with Frankie Y. Bailey (published in 2009, the book pointed out the similarity of issues arising under Prohibition and the later War On Drugs). The NYS Writers Institute posted a remembrance of Dr. Green, as did others. These included one by the Green Party and another by John Brown Lives!

 

News articles about Dr. Green’s death included plaudits from elected officials and many others. But the profound loss created by her death was most deeply reflected in the outpouring of admiration and grief expressed by community members at a candlelight procession from the CFLJ office to the Alice Moore Black Arts and Cultural Center in Albany’s South End on August 23rd. Ta-Sean Murdock, CFLJ’s Director of Operations, will assume the organization’s leadership until a decision about Dr. Green’s successor is made; Murdock’s quote in the announcement of this step reflected the vows of many on the 23rd: “the values she instilled in all of us will continue to guide the work ….”

 

Spikes in Crime Not Due to Bail Reform, National Report Says

“The first nationwide study of the causal effects of bail reform on crime trends definitively discredits the narrative that limiting cash bail leads to spikes in the crime rate,” says the first sentence of an August 15th post on American Prospect Blogs. “The evidence for a connection between bail reform and crime is weak,” is the more nuanced beginning of an announcement by the Brennan Center for Justice concerning its new report, which is available for download. “Bail Reform and Public Safety” uses “data from dozens of jurisdictions nationwide to test bail reform’s causal impact on crime trends,” comparing “major offenses from 2015 through 2021 in 22 cities that had in place some type of bail reform with 11 others that did not.” The report says its “findings add to a growing body of literature showing that bail reform is an unlikely explanation for recent trends in crime, whether increases or decreases.” Noting the need for investments to build on bail reform, such as funding for community-based service providers and supervision programs, the report concludes that “leaders who are serious about improving public safety will need to look beyond bail policy to reduce crime and violence.”

 

Regarding New York’s bail law, the Brennan Center reviewed “multiple papers that have sought to study bail reform’s impact in New York” and found that “the papers suggest that bail reform may not have increased aggregate rearrests but may have increased recidivism in some types of cases,” concluding that such a finding underscores the need for precision when studying bail reform.”

 

As a Buffalo News editorial noted on July 25th, “[c]ritics of New York's bail reform won't quit,” often making assumptions that “don't take into account the complexities of assessing flight risk.” But, it concluded, “[m]ore studies may be needed, especially if they encourage critics to consider facts rather than fearmongering.” A guest essay on Newsday.com on August 1st by a former prosecutor focused on the main target of those seeking to change the bail laws—the bar to judicial consideration of dangerousness in evaluating pretrial detention. The author and other critics don’t want to (just) undo the reforms of 2019, they want to undo New Yorks’ decades-old decision not to allow judges to try and predict whether an individual, presumed innocent of current charges against them, might do something bad in the future.

 

NYSDA continues to monitor media and social science developments regarding bail and to challenge rollback efforts. See, for example, the April-June issue of the REPORT.

 

 

AI News from NYSDA’s Discovery and Forensic Support Unit (forensics@nysda.org)

 

Generative AI Tools: A New Ethics Opinion from the ABA

On July 29th, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility released a formal opinion on the use of generative artificial intelligence for practicing attorneys. This opinion is well worth the read as it takes what can be an unfamiliar and daunting new class of digital tools and explains potential uses, risks, and rewards. Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is a tool where a user inputs a prompt, the tool reviews a vast amount of data in a very short time and provides output to the user. The output can be in the form of text that may (or may not) answer the user’s question, an image created based on what the user input, or a host of other responses. GAI bases its response on data that it has been fed (trained on) when it was programed, and on data users’ input. Even as the author types this, Microsoft Word is using a GAI predictive text tool to anticipate the next word. You can turn this feature off by heading to File>Options>Advanced and unchecking the boxes for “Show Autocomplete suggestions” and “Show text predictions while typing” (on this author’s version of Word).

 

Some issues with GAI include not knowing the source material the tool was trained on or how the GAI tool itself works to comb through that material to generate a response. Moreover, some GAI tools also rely on data you input to continue the tool’s learning. Model Rule 1.6 deals with the Confidentiality of Information. Any information you feed a GAI tool may be used in that tool’s training and can form the basis of a future response to another user. In other words, if you input confidential or client-identifying information, a stranger could one day see that same information in a response to one of their prompts, as we learned during Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez’s presentation, An Artificial Intelligence Roadmap for Practicing Defenders, at NYSDA’s Annual Meeting and Conference in July.

 

Attorneys have recently made headlines, getting into trouble by relying on GAI tools to find or summarize caselaw for them. Many GAI tools have shown they are not robust enough to provide consistently reliable information and may instead respond with very convincing “hallucinations” that appear legitimate but are completely fabricated. As those headline-making attorneys discovered, ChatGPT and similar GAI tools may be best suited for creative writing and simply cannot be a substitute for your own legal research. As the GAI Ethics Opinion succinctly stated, when discussing Model Rule 1.1: Competence, “lawyers may not abdicate their responsibilities by relying solely on a GAI tool to perform tasks that call for the exercise of professional judgment.” For information about the top uses of GAI for lawyers, written in part by GAI with humorous results, see: Survey Shows Legal Research is the Most Common Use of Generative AI by Lawyers: a short, ‘almost funny’ report on a Bloomberg Law survey. | e-Discovery Team.

 

As with the use of any new technology in the practice of law, the overarching message of Formal Opinion 512 is “lawyers should either acquire a reasonable understanding of the benefits and risks of the GAI tools that they employ in their practices or draw on the expertise of others who can provide guidance about the relevant GAI tool’s capabilities and limitations. This is not a static undertaking. Given the fast-paced evolution of GAI tools, technological competence presupposes that lawyers remain vigilant about the tools’ benefits and risks. Although there is no single right way to keep up with GAI developments, lawyers should consider reading about GAI tools targeted at the legal profession, attending relevant continuing legal education programs, and, as noted above, consulting others who are proficient in GAI technology.”

 

Beware of Cybercheck, Axon’s Draft One, and the Allure of AI

Making headlines recently is an AI tool called Cybercheck* and its founder, Adam Mosher. After being investigated by several digital forensic experts, Cybercheck’s reports have been called “implausible” as their accuracy and legitimacy have been called into question. Cybercheck has been linked to thousands of cases, including in New York.

 

Some chilling facts come from an Akron, Ohio homicide prosecution. “The [Cybercheck] report, a copy of which was attached to a court filing, claims Mendoza's phone was at the crime scene on August 20, 2020, 18 days after the shooting. This went unnoticed for four months, until the police department informed Cybercheck of the discrepancy on January 24, 2023, according to documents included in a court filing. That day Cybercheck issued a word-for-word identical report, citing the same data with the same 93.13% accuracy rate. But the date was changed to August 2, 2020. One month later, Mendoza was arrested and charged with murder.” After being denied the source code of Cybercheck, Mr. Mendoza’s legal team successfully challenged their reports with the help of forensic experts hired specifically to analyze the Cybercheck reports. The prosecution ultimately withdrew this evidence before it could be subjected to a Daubert hearing.

 

Additional concerning generative AI tech rolling out includes Axon’s Draft One: a bodycam-based GAI report writing software for police. From a recent Associated Press article, “Along with using AI to analyze and summarize the audio recording, Axon experimented with computer vision to summarize what’s ‘seen’ in the video footage, before quickly realizing that the technology was not ready. ‘Given all the sensitivities around policing, around race and other identities of people involved, that’s an area where I think we’re going to have to do some real work before we would introduce it,’ said Smith, the Axon CEO, describing some of the tested responses as not ‘overtly racist’ but insensitive in other ways.”

 

Some parting words to ponder come from Mr. Mendoza’s attorney, Don Malarcik: “AI is so new, and there's so much hype. These police officers and prosecutors just bought into the latest, greatest claims that AI will solve everything.”

 

*This August 6, 2024, Business Insider article is behind a paywall but may be accessed via certain legal subscriptions like Westlaw or by contacting NYSDA at info@nysda.org.

 

AI Makes Covertly Racist Decisions Based on Dialect, New Study Finds

New research published in Nature has found that despite training to disassociate “overtly negative stereotypes” with Black individuals, large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 fail and output racist stereotypes about people speaking African American English (AAE). As summarized in Science, one deeply discouraging finding was that “the LLMs ascribed negative stereotypes to AAE texts more consistently than human participants in similar studies from the pre-Civil Rights era.” Further, when provided a scenario about criminal trials and asked to opine on the hypothetical defendant’s guilt, “the models were more likely to recommend convicting speakers of AAE compared with speakers of Standardized American English.” Attempts to train LLMs away from these biases using several rounds of human feedback have been only marginally successful. It seems that in some cases, training a model to combat overt racism has left a complete blind spot for covert racism. As we have seen with many forms of generative AI, it simply is not ready to be trusted for many “primetime” applications, particularly for any type of social decision-making.


Association News


Upcoming Training

 

Thursday, October 17, 2024, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, Informational Webinar on the Clean Slate Act

NYSDA will be hosting a free informational session on the Clean Slate Act by the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) and the NYS Office of Court Administration (OCA). DCJS and OCA will provide an overview of the Clean Slate legislation and implementation of the law. No CLE credit will be offered for this program. For more information and to register, click here.

 

Family Defender Article 6 Custody Lunchtime Training Series for Parent Attorneys

This free four-part webinar series will cover some of the most intricate topics encountered by family defense attorneys in Family Court Act Article 6 cases. Our presenters are well-respected and experienced family court attorneys from around the state, including Alexandra J. Buckley, Mark Funk, William King, Shaina Kovalsky, Seana Sartori, and Lisa Shoenfeld. See program and registration information below. The date for the fourth and final program on Venue and Jurisdictional Issues will be announced soon.

 

  • Friday, October 18, 2024, 1:00 – 2:30 pm, Extraordinary Circumstances: What You Need to Know About Non-Parent Custody Filings. For more information and to register, click here.


  • Thursday, November 14, 2024, 1:00 – 2:30 pm, Best Interests: What Is It? How Do You Prove It? For more information and to register, click here.


  • Thursday, December 5, 2024, 1:00 – 2:30 pm, The A to Z of Article 6 Custody Relocation. For more information and to register, click here.

 

Friday, October 25, 2024, Reimagining Family Defense: Policy Reform in the Family Courts

This free webinar will provide an update on what work is being conducted on a systemic level to effectuate change in the family regulatory system. It will include an overview of the family court bills that were introduced last session, and their status. There will be a discussion of how the proposed bills would affect family defense practice. Among the bills to be discussed are the “ACD” and the Preserving Family Bonds bills. There will be an opportunity for Q&A and discussion, as well as information on how individual attorneys can join the coalition. The presenters will be from the amazing policy teams of The Bronx Defenders, Center for Family Representation, and Brooklyn Defender Services. For more information and to register, click here.

 

Thursday, November 7, 2024, to Saturday, November 9, 2024, Practical DWI Detection and Standardized Field Sobriety Testing (SFST) Instruction Course, Albany

This intensive in-person program is a must for defenders representing clients in DWI cases. There are limited spots available, and a minimum number of participants is required. Those interested in attending are encouraged to register ASAP. All attendees will receive a copy of the NHTSA Standardized Field Sobriety Testing Manual. The presenters are Jonathan D. Cohn, Partner, Gerstenzang, Sills, Cohn, & Gerstenzang, and John R. Sandle, Owner & Chief Investigator, Sand Investigations. The registration deadline is October 3rd. For more information and to register, click here

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