NYCBA Members Newsletter

Welcome to the March 2008 issue of our Newsletter.

Reminder - Annual Meeting April 8, 2008:

As you have previously been advised, the Annual Meeting of the New York Criminal Bar Association will be held on April 8, 2008, at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ceremonial Courtroom, which is located at 500 Pearl Street on the 9th floor. Following the meeting there will be a CLE program, the topic of which will be announced.

At the meeting 5 directors will be chosen for 3 year terms. The Board has recommended the following individuals for those positions:

Upcoming CLE Seminars:

• March 26, 2008 - Crack Cocaine Sentencing Guidelines Update. The New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is sponsoring this timely seminar on Wednesday evening, March 26, 2008 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Ceremonial Courtroom of the United States Courthouse for the Eastern District of New York, at 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brroklyn, N.Y. The fee for attending this Seminar is $50 for Members of the NYSACDL and $75 for non-Members. Additional details regarding this seminar can be accessed by clicking here. Reservations are required and you must contact Patricia Marcus of the NYSACDL if you plan to attend. (Telephone 212-532-4434; Fax 212-532-4668; Email nysacdl@aol.com)
  
  
  
• April 30, 2008 - New York City's Marijuana Arrest Policy Thirty Years After Decriminalization. The Committee on Drugs and the Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York is sponsoring this seminar on Wednesday evening, April 30, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. at the offices of the Association at 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY. Additional details regarding this seminar can be accessed by clicking here.

Upcoming Events - NACDL's 50th Annivrsary Dinner:

We are pleased to announce that the NACDL will be holding its 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner and Celebration in New York Friday, May 2, 2008 at Cipriani Wall Street. For further information about this historic event, see the attached invitation from Carmen Hernandez, the President of the NACDL. We hope that you will make every effort to attend.

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 on the What's New Section of our website copies of two interesting articles, both of which were published in the March, 2008 issue of the NACDL's Champion Magazine, namely "A Practitioner's Guide to The Crack Retroactivity Amendment: Overcoming the Many Obstacles to Justice," by Anne E. Blanchard and Sarah S Gannett, and "Providing Counsel in Crack Retroactivity Amendment Cases - Sensible and Constitutionally Required," by Amy Baron-Evans.
  
  
• We have also posted on the What's New Section of our website two interesting articles, the first entitled "Court of Appeals Evidence Decisions in 2007," by Prof. Michael A. Martin, as published in the New York Law Journal, Feb. 8, 2008; and the second entitled "Court Defines When Analysis Of Evidence Is Testimonial," by Joel Stashenko, as published in the New York Law Journal on February 20, 2008.
  
  
• We have posted on the Other Links - Miscellaneous Section of our website a copy of the Rules of the New York City Department of Corrections regarding Attorney, Legal and Official Visits with Inmates, dated April 7, 2005.
  
  

What's New On The Internet:

• An easy way to get the text out of PDF documents. Sometimes cutting and pasting text out of PDF documents can be a royal pain. If you're got a copy of Adobe Acrobat, you can export a PDF file to a Word document or even a plain text file, to make extraction of text less of a hassle. But if you don't have Acrobat, check out PDFTextOnline. This site will quickly convert your PDF to plain text, which you can then copy and paste into other applications. It's a nifty, free and easy way to work with the text in your PDF files.
  
  
• Rikers Island Inmates to get Uniforms and Lose Telephone Privacy. According to a recent press release from the Associated Press, all inmates at Rikers Island will soon be required to wear uniforms and will have their telephone calls monitored.
  
  
  

Annual Dues:

If you have not already paid your annual dues to the New York Criminal Bar Association, please do so at your earliest convenience. Payment was due on January 1, 2008.

Payment may be made by sending your check, made payable to the “New York Criminal Bar Association,” to Michael K. Bachrach, NYCBA Treasurer, 276 Fifth Avenue, Suite 501, New York, New York, 10001. Payments may also be made by faxing or emailing your credit card authorization to Mr. Bachrach at (866) 328-1630 michael@mbachlaw.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) 929-0582, or email him at the above email address. A copy of our Membership Application/Renewal Form is attached to this newsletter for your convenience.

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.

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