NYCBA Members Newsletter

Welcome to the November 2007 issue of our Newsletter. We send all of our Members and friends our very best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving.

President's Message:

On November 10 & 11, 2007, the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel held it's annual death penalty conference at the Baltimore Marriott, Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference was attended by over 225 attorneys engaged in federal death penalty litigation around the country. The conference was well attended by a large contingent of attorneys from the New York Criminal Bar Association who practice here in both the Southern District and Eastern District courts, handling federal capital cases.

A variety of issues were addressed related to trial preparation and the presentment of mitigation evidence in federal death penalty cases.

Several members of our association served prominently as panelists and/or instructors. Board members Edward D. Wilford and Richard Jasper conducted work shops on issues related to jury selection and issues faced by capital and non-capital defendants. Board member Michael Bachrach served as a member of a group of distinguished panelists on the subject of New BOP Data and Daubert Challenges to Future Danger Evidence.

The program was an overwhelming success, with an outstanding contribution by member of our association. All members are urged to become involved in and to continue the representation of federal capital defendants.

Yours for a better defense,

Tony Ricco,
President
email: tonyricco@aol.com

Upcoming Events:

CLE Seminar - Tuesday, November 20, 2007

REMINDER!

Don't forget. Tomorrow evening, November 20, 2007, the NYCBA, in conjunction with The Legal Aid Society, is sponsoring a CLE program entitled " UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT - - PENDING AND RECENT CASES.'

The speaker will be PROFESSOR LEON FRIEDMAN of Hofstra Law School.

This program will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Central Jury Room on the 15th Floor of the Criminal Courts Building, 100 Centre Street, in Manhattan. Light refreshments will be served starting at 5:15 p.m. Please arrive by 5:30 p.m. as MCLE rules prohibit awarding credit to late-comers.

Two hours of New York State MCLE credit will be awarded in the area of Professional Practice. Certificates of attendance at this program will be issued by The Legal Aid Society, which is an accredited MCLE provider.

Annual Holiday Party:

REMINDER!

Also don't forget. Our Annual Holiday Party will be held on Wednesday evening, December 12, 2007 at SPQR Restaurant, 133 Mulberry St., New York.

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.

The honoree this year will be Hon. Michael J. Obus,whom we will honor for his dedicated service on the bench.

The cost of the party is $95

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., 276 Fifth Ave., Suite 501, New York, NY 10001.

To pay by credit card, 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 (646) 797-2776 or michael@mbachlaw.com; or pay online by clicking on the "Events" button on the left side of the opening page of our Website at www.nycrimbar.org/.

For further information, contact the Chairperson for this event, Genay Ann Leitman, Esq. at (212) 687-4499.

We look forward to seeing all of you on December 12th.

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 a copy of a 100-page special Report published on October 15, 2007 by the New York State Commission on Sentencing Reform entitled "The Future of Sentencing in New York State: A Preliminary Proposal for Reform."
  
  
  
• We have also posted on the "What's New" Section of our website a copy of an article entitled "House approves bill protecting attorney-client privilege," by Marcia Coyle, as published in The National Law Journal, November 15, 2007.
  
  
  
• Finally, we have posted online an article entitled "Panel Upholds Convictions of Former Tyco Executives," by Mark Fass, as published in the New York Law Journal on November 16, 2007. A copy of the Appellate Decision's ruling can be accessed by clicking here.
  
  
  

What's New On The Internet:

• The New Crack/Cocaine Guidelines. As most criminal defense practitioners are by now aware, the United States Sentencing Commission has recently adopted a number of amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines which are designed to reduce - but not eliminate - the sentencing disparity that has long existed for crimes involving the use of crack cocaine, as opposed to powder cocaine.
  
  Those new amendments became effective on November 1, 2007; and a brief summary of the amendments and an analysis of how they will affect sentencing is contained in a document prepared by Mary Price, the General Counsel of the FAMM Foundation, entitled "What you need to know about the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s proposed crack guideline amendment."
  
  At the time those amendments became effective, the Sentencing Commission put off a decision on whether or not to make those amendments retroactive to inmates who are currently serving sentences under the old crack Guidelines. Before resolving that issue, the Sentencing Commission decided to hold public hearings; and it solicited public comment from many different sources. For a report on those hearings, see "A report on the USSC crack retroactivity hearing," by Prof. Doug Berman, as posted on Sentencing Law and Policy on Nov. 13, 2007. As of the date of this Newsletter, the Sentencing Commission has not yet announced how it proposes to resolve the issue of retroactivity.
  
  The Government, naturally, is opposed to granting any retroactivity to prisoners serving sentences under the old Guidelines - a position that drew a sharp rebuke from Judge Paul G. Cassell of the D.Utah, in an op-ed article entitled "Repairing a Crack in the System," that was published in the Washington Post on November 12, 2007.
  
  The Staff of the Sentencing Commission has also prepared a detailed analysis of some of the many factors involved in granting retroactivity, which is contained in a special report entitled "Analysis of the Impact of the Crack Cocaine Amendment If Made Retroactive"; and the Commission has posted on its website a sampling of some of the 33,000 public comment letters it received on the issue of retroactivity. That sampling is available by clicking here.
  
  For an analysis of some of the issues that the Sentencing Commission is reviewing, see "The U. S. Sentencing Commission Considers Shortening Terms for Imprisoned Crack Offenders: Should the Reduction of the Disparity Between Crack and Powder Cocaine Sentencing Be Retroactive?," by Mark Allenbaugh and Paul Hofer, as posted on FindLaw's Writ on November 19, 2007.
  
  

• Joint NACDL/Innocence Project. We have posted online an article entitled "Lawyer Groups to Flag Cases Needing Review," by John Solomon, as published in the Washington Post on Nov. 19, 2007, which discusses a joint project of the NACDL and the Innocence Project, who have announced that they will independently review cases nationwide where the FBI used a discredited bullet-matching science and will try to assist defendants who might have been wrongly convicted. The move comes in the wake of an investigation that found the FBI has not taken steps to alert hundreds of defendants that they may have been convicted through the use of comparative bullet-lead analysis, a forensic tool that was discarded two years ago.
  
  
  
• AltLaw.org - A New Alternative Way to Search for Federal Cases - Free. Have you checked out AltLaw yet? It's a search engine that will let you search the full text of U.S. Supreme Court and Circuit Appeals Court opinions. The current coverage from these courts is so far not great, but still pretty impressive: Supreme Court opinions from May 1991, and Circuit Court opinions from various dates (the earliest 1992), depending on the court. Currently there are more than 184,000 cases in the database.
  
  The search function is pretty easy to use -- just enter your terms, and the results allow you to view an HTML preview of the opinion. You can then download the original opinion in PDF, or get a text-only version. AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia and University of Colorado Law Schools. It has a long way to go, but as a free search tool for case law, it's a promising start. Check it out at http://altlaw.org/v1/
  
  

• Changes at Rikers Island. We have posted online an article of interest entitled "NYC Jail Inmates to Get Uniforms, Lose Telephone Privileges," which describes a number of recent changes at Rikers Island, including a new policy of taping all outgoing phone calls.

Please Update Your Contact Information:

If you are changing your preferred email address or other contact information, please let us know so that you will continue to receive this Newsletter, NYCBA CLE notices and other information. Please send your new info to nycrimbar@nyc.rr.com

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