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Last Updated on Thursday, April 08, 2004

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Addendum to Drug Court Agreements May Affect Your Client's Rights

There have been several developments regarding specialty courts of which you should be aware. Chief Administrative Judge Lippman issued an order on March 19, 2002 directing courts to incorporate into the agreement that your clients sign when they begin drug court, a waiver of the prohibition against ex parte communications as it pertains to any non-appearance of counsel at "staffings." This will leave drug court judges free to consider communications from prosecutors, treatment staff and others during these off the-record meetings in counsel's absence against your client. Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Traficanti issued a memo on August 20, 2002, directing distribution of this order to all drug courts (operational and planned). There is a link to a PDF copy of the order in the navigation bar at the top of this page.

There is also an opinion of the Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics citing the order favorably, along with a memo from the court System's Chief Counsel on confidentiality and subpoena issues. These documents will be posted here in the navigation bar above next week.

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Expert Witness Maximum Fee Table

We added a list of various experts and the maximum allowable hourly fee paid to each type of expert on the Program Documents page.

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Article on Law of Continuances

Michael Rosenhouse, Esq., a columnist with the Daily Record has provided an article dealing with the law of continuances in criminal cases. You can read the article from the link above.

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New Forms Available for Family Court Appeals

The Appellate Division, 4th Department has issued new forms to be used in Family Court appeals. The package includes forms for the various notices and the affidavit to appeal as a poor person that assigned counsel is required to file on behalf of any client wishing to appeal. The form package, in PDF format, is posted on the Program Documents page.

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Downtown Volume Copy Program Available

For those of you in the downtown area we are happy to announce that our volume copy program has expanded to include Patrick Printing at 42 West Main Street. If you are doing an appeal and face advancing a large sum for the voluminous copying required, please consider using Patrick Printing as they offer us a favorable per copy rate. This program is intended for cases where voluminous copying is required that would entail a large outlay from your own pocket for the copies. It cannot be used for the usual copying of motions, letters, etc. To use the service you need to take a copy of your pre-printed voucher to the copy center, provide them with the ACP file number, name of client and your name. If you have any questions about this service, please contact our office. We still maintain our account with any local Kinkos for those who find it more convenient.

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New Plea in Satisfaction Form Requirements

The Hon. Patricia D. Marks, Supervising Judge, Criminal Term Courts, has issued the following order regarding pleas in Superior Courts satisfying any other pending criminal matter:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that any plea entered in the Superior Criminal Courts in Monroe County that satisfies any pending criminal proceedings in any jurisdiction located within Monroe County requires "plea in satisfaction" form be completed by the defendant's counsel and subscribed by a representative of the District Attorney's Office, the court accepting the felony plea and defendant's counsel.

IN ADDITION, attached to the plea in satisfaction form shall be copies of all criminal information and supporting depositions for charges set forth in the plea satisfaction form.

Download the Plea in Satisfaction Form (PDF format)

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Article on Clear & Effective Writing

We are pleased to include an article by Joshua Stein, Esq., that appeared in The Practical Litigator and the New York State Bar Association Journal and the Daily Record. The article is entitled Writing Clearly and Effectively: How to Keep the Reader's Attention and contains valuable information and tips on making your legal writing clearer and more effective. Read the full article.

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Court of Appeals Criminal Leave Application Outline

Stuart Cohen, a Clerk with the Court of Appeals has prepared an outline of procedures for requesting leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals. It is very informative and recently updated. You can also download a copy in PDF format.

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Two Articles by Donald Rehkopf, Jr.

Don Rehkopf, Jr., a frequent lecturer and writer on criminal law issues, has allowed us to use two informative articles here on our web page. One article deals with Motion Practice and the other, entitled "THINKING and DRINKING: Reconsidering Alcoholism, Intoxication and the Role of the Defense Forensic Expert", deals with the issue of the intoxication defense in criminal cases. The outlines are in PDF format so you need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print the outlines. Right click the links to save the articles to your computer for later use or left click to open them now. If you don't have the free Acrobat Reader, click the logo here to download it. After downloading and installing, close the new window to return here.

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