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Thứ Năm, 14 tháng 10, 2010
Ithaca by Choice not by Chance
After years of journaling, I wanted a more authentic life. To me, that meant being in a more natural area (less asphalt more trees). I wanted a radical change of my environment. I was ready to escape suburbia, and big city practices. I was tired of the parking, the traffic, the disconnect, the running from place to place, the rat wheel, and the mindlessness.
Now not everyone gets Ithaca. It is not heaven, merely a nice city nestled here in the Fingerlakes. I can appreciate it in contrast to so many other places I have lived, and so many more places I have visited. Ithaca is merely relative. My closest friends advised a psychological evaluation when I told them I was moving here. Why would you leave the paradise of South Florida? Why would you leave all of this? The swimming pools, the hot weather, the resources, the simple flat roads, the brand new homes, the shopping, and the abundance of money. Why indeed?
Well it now almost four years later... and I can say that Ithaca can grow people the way that it grows flowers and plants, this is a fertile place both figuratively and literally. I could have only imagined what community really means and the communities that surround Ithaca encompass more than just land, they embody caring, I have never in my life met more down to earth, honest to goodness, authentic people, for better or worse who embrace who they are... warts and all!
Thứ Tư, 13 tháng 10, 2010
Lawyer Lawrence Newman (Rants and Raves)
Lawyer Lawrence Newman (Rants and Raves)
Date: 2010-10-11, 11:36AM EDT
Reply To This Post
Lawrence Newman is one of the two finest private practice lawyers I have encountered over forty years of professional work in two states. The other was a former US attorney. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of DWI law with productive relationships with the courts that he represents clients in. To have a family member represented by Larry is like knowing that they are under the care of a gifted specialist physician who combines clinical knowledge with true care for those who come to him. His direct availability to clients and his immediate and personal responsiveness to their difficulties reminds you that before becoming a lawyer, he was a clinician. The legal outcomes he gains for clients are extraordinary, his flat-fee billing an expression of an ethic rarely found in the legal profession. You never have to remind him of a case: he is already working on it.
David B. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Psychotherapist
Ithaca
Location: Rants and Raves
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
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PostingID: 2000152256
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Thứ Ba, 12 tháng 10, 2010
Who Determines Whether to Have the Jury Consider a Lesser Included Offense - Counsel or Defendant?
Having accepted the assistance of counsel, a defendant retains authority over certain fundamental decisions (see Jones v Barnes, 463 US 745, 751; People v Colon, 90 NY2d 824, 825; People v White, 73 NY2d 468, 478, cert denied 493 US 859). Strategic and tactical decisions, in contrast, rest with counsel (see People v Colon, 90 NY2d at 826; Arko v. Colorado, 183 P3d 555, 558 [Colo]). The demarcation between the two, however, is elusive (see Government of Virgin Is. v Weatherwax, 77 F3d 1425, 1433, cert denied 519 US 1020).
The Court of Appeals has not yet considered this issue. However, in People v. Petrovich (87 NY2d 961), the Court was presented with a related question: as between the defendant and his counsel, who decides whether the affirmative defense of extreme emotional distress should be submitted to the jury? As the Colville court summarized, The Court of Appeals
held that this decision did not implicate a matter of trial strategy or tactics; rather, it was a fundamental decision and, thus, it fell to the defendant. The Court reasoned, citing to the second edition of the ABA Standards, that a verdict was dispositive of a defendant's fate and the submission of the extreme emotional disturbance defense could be determinative of the verdict. In that sense, as the defendant expressed on the record, eliminating the extreme emotional disturbance defense increased his chances of a full acquittal. Thus, the Court concluded, this was not unlike other fundamental decisions already recognized as belonging to the defendant.
Without explanation, the Appellate Division, Fourth Department in People v Taylor (2 AD3d 1306, 1308 [4th Dept 2003]) cited this holding in Petrovich, as support of its conclusion that a defendant was not deprived of his right to make a fundamental decision when the court considered a lesser-included offense charge after discussing the issue with defense counsel and the prosecutor, without input from the defendant.
So what did the Second Department hold? It concluded that under the facts of the Colville case, in which counsel acquiesced to the defendant's decision not to request submission of lesser-included offenses to the jury, it did not have to reach a decision on this issue, since such acquiescence does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel even if it was decision to be made by counsel.
Thứ Hai, 11 tháng 10, 2010
Andrew Cuomo and His Deadly Court Cartel
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| Andrew Cuomo |
Posted on October 10, 2010 by Ron Moore
LINK
According to Libertarian Attorney General candidate Carl Person, Andrew Cuomo , as HUD Secretary helped to create the mortgage fraud and predictably has done nothing to stop banks from using false affadavits. Person says “Andrew Cuomo has a duty as NYS Attorney General to start lawsuits to stop Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC, Countrywide, Wells Fargo and other lenders from using the New York courts to foreclose mortgages on homeowners in NYS.”
Person explained that “these banks and lending institutions have been filing false affidavits in New York foreclosure actions for several years and have been illegally obtaining judgments of foreclosure and illegally selling the homes of many tens of thousands of homeowner victims.” Presently, there are approximately 80,000 foreclosure cases in the New York courts, with more being filed every day.
“Cuomo is trying not to get involved”, said Person, “because he helped to create the mortgage fraud when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).” Person also stated that “Cuomo should have recused himself and let someone else in his Office of New York State Attorney General be assigned the responsibility for ensuring that mortgage foreclosure fraud is stopped in NYS.”
Person went on to say that the banks, servicing companies, and other participants in the illegal activities should be penalized by not being able to use the New York courts to commence or pursue any foreclosure actions in New York State as to any residential mortgages, and that the banks should not be able to assign the residential mortgages to anyone else for the purpose of starting foreclosure proceedings in New York State.
What needs to be done, according to Person, “is to require the banks to enter into modification agreements with residential homeowners decreasing the monthly payment to the current low mortgage rate of 4.5% or so and decreasing the principal amount of the loan to 90% of the present value of the property.” As to each property for which this takes place, the bank would then be able to enforce the modified mortgage in the New York courts.
“Everyone can see that Cuomo is unable to serve honestly as New York State Attorney General, and this should disqualify him from becoming Governor of New York State,” according to Person.
Cuomo’s running mate for NYS Attorney General hasn’t done anything in Albany to stop the fraud, and can be expected to do nothing except benefit the banks.
Person said “If elected, I would commence the needed lawsuits to stop this devastating fraud on the NYS courts and homeowners.”
From Betsy Combier: If the banks dont condemn your property, then the Courts will. It's all the same land grab. Is anyone checking into Andrew Cuomo's connections to New York State Surrogates Courts, where property of the dead are grabbed from the next of kin by the State under color of law?
In Defense of Eminent Domain
Michael Cardozo, Corporation Counsel, Columbia Law Review
NY Court of Appeals Upholds Eminent Domain
Posted on November 24, 2009 by Mark Axinn
LINK
From the Institute for Justice:
WEB RELEASE: November 24, 2009
Media Contact:
Christina Walsh (703) 682-9320
Arlington, Va.—The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, today announced that it would uphold the decision of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to condemn privately owned homes and small businesses to make way for wealthy developer Bruce Ratner’s so-called “Atlantic Yards” development of 16 mammoth skyscrapers centered around a basketball arena.
“Today’s decision puts homes and businesses throughout New York at risk of condemnation,” said Dana Berliner, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice (IJ), which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. “Courts have a duty to look carefully at the government’s claim that it has the right to take someone’s home or business, and the Court of Appeals has simply refused to do that.”
While upholding the taking, the New York court did not go so far as to embrace the United States Supreme Court’s much-maligned reasoning in the 2005 Kelo v. City of New London case, which held that the U.S. Constitution allows governments to condemn property for economic development alone. Instead, the Court found the takings were for a “public use” because of the ESDC’s determination that the area to be condemned was “blighted”—a determination that was based on a study paid for by the would-be developer and not even initiated until years after the Atlantic Yards project was announced.
In a dissent, Judge Robert Smith excoriated the majority for abandoning its duty to critically examine the ESDC’s assertions. “To let the agency itself determine when the public use requirement is satisfied is to make the agency a judge in its own cause,” Judge Smith wrote. “I think that it is we who should perform the role of judges, and that we should do so by deciding that the proposed taking in this case is not for public use.”
“The developer’s study did not find anything a normal person would call ‘blight,’” explained Berliner. “Instead, it found that the neighborhood was ‘underutilized’—in other words, that the developer could think of bigger things that could be built where these homes and businesses are. If that is all that is necessary for condemnation, then literally every piece of property in New York is at risk.”
The majority’s opinion frankly acknowledges that the court may be opening the door to “political appointees to public corporations relying on studies paid for by developers . . . [as] a predicate for the invasion of property rights and the razing of homes and businesses.” But, it says, preventing such abuses is not the job of the courts, advising New Yorkers to look to their legislature to fix any problems.
“New York is one of only seven states that has failed utterly to pass any kind of eminent-domain reform in the wake of the Kelo decision, and today’s opinion will only make things worse,” said IJ Staff Attorney Robert McNamara. “The state courts are looking to the legislature to fix the problem, while the legislature is apparently looking to the courts. And that means more and more New Yorkers will be looking at condemnation notices.”
“Property rights are as sacred to citizens of New York as they are to Americans nationwide, and New Yorkers have rightly looked to their courts to protect those rights,” concluded IJ President and General Counsel Chip Mellor. “Today’s opinion should be a clarion call to the state legislature that they cannot avoid this issue any longer. Now is the time to give state residents the reform and protections they desperately need.
Thứ Sáu, 8 tháng 10, 2010
Confusion over New York DWI Ignition Interlock Devices
Larry Newman DWI Defense Google Maps Reviews
In the interests of preserving my reviews on Google Maps, which have been lost or misplaced too many times now... I am reposting them here just in case... btw you check out more of my reviews on avvo.com, a lawyer review site.
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