Trials & Tribulations: Ex-prosecutor is back from D.C. - as defense lawyer

(adapted from The Times Herald Record, January 18, 2008)

The last time that anyone saw Dave Hoovler in Goshen was in June 2006, when a who's who of state and local law enforcement toasted his good fortune as he departed for a job in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Justice Department.

When he passed through last week, the e-mails and phone calls came thick and fast: "You're back!" people said. Well, he is - but now, he's Hoovler for the defense.

Hoovler starts next week as an associate in the Chester office of Ostrer Rosenwasser LLP. He'll be doing a bit of everything, from civil cases to white-collar criminal defense, and his return adds a bit of intrigue to the air. Hoovler, 39, wanted to stop commuting from D.C. to Orange County, where he's raising a family. He'd also like to test the political waters, although he's not yet saying which office he has in mind, or when he'd like to run.

His presence makes for an interesting triumvirate: A former Orange County Court judge (Stewart Rosenwasser) and a veteran defense lawyer (Ben Ostrer). Ostrer's won several high-profile cases over the last decade, and last year, Rosenwasser scored a big win when he successfully argued that a judge should throw out an indictment against two Town of Crawford officials because of a flawed grand jury presentation by the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

Hoovler had some big wins himself during a 6-year run at the DA's office. He won the conviction of a Westtown man who ran one of the biggest dog-fighting rings in the country. Police praised him for his locally groundbreaking use of wiretaps to prosecute Newburgh's fearsome Benkard Barrio Kings street gang, which had virtually annexed an entire city block in Newburgh's East End and turned it into a retail drug market. And he says that to this day, people walk up to him and repeat his remark about a 2005 hunting accident that claimed the life of a 13-year-old boy in Sparrowbush. Hoovler told a judge that the boy's relatives gave better treatment to the illegally hunted deer they were trying to hide than they gave to the wounded boy.

What it means

The U.S. Supreme Court this week reversed two lower-court rulings and gave its blessing to New York's system for picking state Supreme Court justices. Up here, Supreme Court justices decide substantial civil cases, such as personal injury claims, election disputes and municipal conflicts like the Orange County-Kiryas Joel fracas over a water pipeline.

Here's what the decision means if you live in Orange, Ulster or Sullivan counties: By early November, when you go to the polls to vote for a Supreme Court justice, the candidates will have already been picked and positioned on multiple ballot lines by political party bosses, including some from other counties. Orange County competes for Supreme Court seats in at-large elections in the 9th Judicial District, which also includes the 400-pound population gorilla of Westchester County. Westchester has more than twice the population of Orange County.

Ulster and Sullivan are at the mercy of the bigger counties in the 3rd Judicial District, such as Albany and Rensselaer.

An Ulster update

Holley Carnright, Ulster County's new district attorney, isn't getting much of a honeymoon.

He's got one senior prosecutor working full time on the grand jury investigation into massive cost overruns at the county's new jail, which means that 10 percent of his full-time staff is devoted to one case.

He inherited a space crunch in his office that has him searching for desks for his staff.

He worked on New Year's Day and the weekend after that. Last week, between the few bites of a turkey sandwich that constituted lunch, Carnright said he bought a dog for his family.

He anticipates that they'll need the company, because he won't be home much for these first few months.

Trials & Tribulations is the Times Herald-Record's weekly roundup of news, updates and anecdotes about local courts and criminal justice. Tips and threats are welcome. Call Oliver Mackson at 346-3130 or e-mail omackson@th-record.com.