NYCBA Members Newsletter

Welcome to the November 2005 issue of our Newsletter.

President's Message:

As Thanksgiving and the holiday season are upon us, I hope that you will give some thought to what you would like to see changed in the criminal justice system in the coming year. Please contact me, or any of the other officers and directors of the New York Criminal Bar Association, about those problems and frustrations, big and small, which you have encountered in the past year and which you believe should be eliminated or at least ameliorated. If there is anything which you believe is working very well, please let us know that also so that we can try to keep it working that way. Feel free to telephone me, email me or talk to me about this at our Holiday Party on December 8, 2005, which I very much hope you will attend.

Henry J. Steinglass
President
(212) 406-7700

Annual Holiday Party:

Our annual Holiday Party will be held on Thursday, December 8, 2005, 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., at SPQR Restaurant, 133 Mulberry Street in Manhattan.

This party is our winter event, and features an open bar, an Italian hot and cold buffet plus Venetian dessert table, Dixie Land Jazz by Judge Herbert Adlerberg’s “Canal Street Jazz Band”, and, of course, catching up with friends and colleagues.

At this event, as in the past, we will honor an outstanding judge, Hon. Bruce Allen, J.S.C., sitting in Supreme Court, New York County, for his years of dedicated service. In addition, for the first time this year, we will honor a new judge, Hon. Anthony J. Ferrara, Judge of the Civil Court sitting in Criminal Court , New York County, who has set an excellent example of how to make the transition from bar to bench.

As always, we also welcome all new judges.  So mark your calendars to come and celebrate the holidays with us.

The cost of the party is: $95 for NYCBA members and $100 for non-members.

Payments may be made by check or credit card.  Checks should be made payable to the “New York Criminal Bar Association,” and sent to our treasurer, Michael K. Bachrach, Esq., 1040 Avenue of the Americas, 24th floor, New York, NY 10018.

To pay by credit card, either go online and click on the button called "Events" or fax your credit card number, expiration date, and billing address to Michael K. Bachrach at (866) 328-1630.  You may also call or email him directly at (212) 382-4621 or mbach2000@yahoo.com.

For further information, contact Dinner Committee Co-Chairs Genay Ann Leitman, Esq. at (212) 687-4499 or Mathew J. Mari, Esq. at (212) 227-5335.

We look forward to seeing all of you on the 8th.

Judicial Screening and Nominations:

If anyone has any information that would bear upon the candidacy of either such person, please advise the Committee at 36 West 44th Street, Suite 1408, New York, NY 10036, Att. Desiree Kim (212-944-6225).

Relocation of Probation Offices

We note that, due to renovations to the U.S. Courthouse at Foley Square, the U.S. Probation Office has been temporarily relocated to the Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway, 14th Floor. The telephone and fax numbers are unchanged.

"Just The Rules" - By Richard Ware Levitt

We remind you that our friend and colleague, Richard Ware Levitt, has recently published a new booklet, entitled "Just The Rules." This spiral bound volume contains the full text of:

• the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
• the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• the Admiralty and Maritime Rules
• the Federal Rules of Evidence
• the Bail Reform Act
• the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (excerpts)

Members of the New York Criminal Bar Association can purchase this booklet at the special price of $19.95. You can order this handy new booklet either

• online by going to northlawpublishers.com [make sure to enter the special promo code "NYCBA" on the checkout page], or
  
  
  
• by mail or fax by clicking here for the special order form [just print out and complete the form and then mail or fax it to North Law Publishers at the address listed].

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 "Briefs and Motions-Legal Memoranda" button, an article entitled "The Federal Firearm Laws and Their Effect on Possession of Rifles and Shotguns for Use For Lawful Sporting and Hunting Purposes," by Richard P. Maigret, AUSA Western District of New York.
  
  
  
• We have also posted in the same section fellow member Joel Dranove's "Guide Through the Federal Criminal Justice System - Third Edition - 2004 ."
  
  
  
• And finally, we have also posted in the same section an article entitled "More Fuel Added to Debate Over Federal Habeas Review," by Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal, Oct. 20, 2005.
  
  

• On the What's New section of our Website, we have posted an article entitled "White Collar Crime," by Elkan Abramowitz and Barry A. Bohrer, that was published in the New York Law Journal, Nov. 1, 2005.
  
  
  

News From the Web

• "Reviewing the Supreme Court 2004-2005 Term from a Defense Perspective," an outstanding 39-page summary prepared by the Office of the Federal Public Defender, Portland, OR, Oct. 2005.
  
  
  
• "Cutting His Own Path: 'Justice' Alito Could Alter Criminal Law," by Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal, November 7, 2005.
  
  
  
• We remind our readers that one of the most useful resources available on the Internet is the "Manual of Recurring Problems in Criminal Trials," Fifth Edition (2001), a comprehensive, 191-page document prepared by the Federal Judicial Center. The format of this remarkably helpful digest is a black letter statement of the law followed by case citations.  Thus, entries look like this:

  1. Production of government witness’s statements
  The Jencks Act provides that statements of a government witness are discoverable by a defendant after that witness has testified on direct examination at trial.

  The court may not compel the government to produce Jencks Act material until after a witness has testified. Some U.S. attorneys will, however, voluntarily produce those materials prior to trial or, at the latest, on the first day of trial.
  United States v. Campagnuolo, 592 F.2d 852 (5th Cir. 1979)
  United States v. Algie, 667 F.2d 569 (6th Cir. 1982)
  United States v. White, 750 F.2d 726 (8th Cir. 1984)

  Production of statements covered by the Jencks Act is not automatic. The defendant must invoke the statute at the appropriate time.
  United States v. Hanna, 55 F.3d 1456 (9th Cir. 1995).
  

• "A More Perfect System: Twenty-Five Years of Guidelines Sentencing Reform," a collection of 18 articles by various distinguished authors published in a special issue of The Stanford Law Review, Vol. 58, No. 1, October 2005.
  

• We remind our readers that, in addition to its renowned "Federal Prison Guidebooks," the Law Offices of Alan Ellis is now in its twelfth year of publication of the "Federal Sentencing and Postconviction News," a newsletter that features useful articles, practice tips, news updates and recent favorable case law.
  

• Finally, we note a new Website that should be of interest to the criminal defense bar - www.reentry.net/ny/index.cfm. This site, which describes itself as the first ever clearinghouse of practical advocate resources on the civil consequences of criminal proceedings, is sponsored by a formidable group of criminal defense organizations, including the Legal Aid Society, the Correctional Association of New York, and the New York State Defenders Association. Unfortunately, the site requires registration (which is free - but always a pain).
  

Google Search Tips

As Google continues to develop as a great starting point for most Internet searches, we thought it might be helpful to present a few search-tip shortcuts that can help save you time. Thus, try starting your search by putting the following codes in the search box:

• INTITLE:  Tells Google to search for just words found in Web page titles.
  Example: intitle:supreme court
  
  
• INURL:  Google looks only in URLs of web pages.  Example: inurl:copyright
  
  
• INTEXT:  Google searches only in the body text of web pages, not in the
  links, URLs or titles.  Example: intext:disaster recovery
  
  
• SITE: (Our personal favorite) Limits Google's search to a particular site.
  Example:  site:bop.gov "drug programs" would offer only references
  to documents pertaining to drug programs available on the BOP site.
  
  
• FILETYPE:  Tells Google to search only for documents of certain
  filetypes.  For example, filetype:doc "samuel alito" brings back only Word
  documents on the nominee.  Other filetypes include:
• PDF
• XLS (Excel files)
• PPT (PowerPoint files)
• RTF (Rich Text files)
• SWF (Shockwave Flash files)
• TXT (Text files)

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