Startling and dramatic news from the world of crime and punishment got handed down November 30 when an appellate court unanimously nullified the previous trial of accused Ulster County murderer Raymond Snyder. The court case had been terminated and the charges dismissed improperly, the appellate judges ruled, after judge Bryan Rounds had allowed the defense to choose among three punishments for the district attorney’s office running afoul of discovery rules.
Those in the courtroom of Ulster County Supreme Court judge Bryan Rounds on April 27, 2022 were treated to an unusual event reminiscent of the theater of the absurd.
The judge entered the courtroom, called the court into session, noted the presence of the defense, noted the presence of the jury, and noted the absence of the prosecutor.
He instructed the absent prosecutor to deliver his opening statement. The courtroom was silent. The judge noted the silence in the room.
Looking briefly at the empty petitioner’s table, behind which the prosecutor would normally be standing, Rounds asked the absent prosecutor to call his first witness. Again, the judge remarked upon the silence. The judge then asked whether the prosecution intended to rest before taking the next stretch of silence for assent.
Meanwhile, the jury of twelve and defendant Raymond Snyder, a man accused of the murder of 47-year-old Romero Underwood, looked on.
Snyder’s lawyer was invited to make his opening statement, which he did, calling for the charges to be dismissed.
Judge Rounds complied.
Snyder, who it has been alleged was tied to the scene of the crime by the presence of his own blood droplets, was free to go about his business.
Learning of Rounds’ decision, the district attorney’s office filed an Article 78 proceeding to prevent the judge from enforcing his order to dismiss charges, arguing among other things “that the trial which was held was a nullity.” Nullity means a state of nothingness.
The court’s authority
Manny Nneji, now district attorney-elect, had not forgotten the date. He had opted not to descend from his third-floor office in the same building to enter the courtroom that day. Nneji says, “We believed that the judge exceeded his authority, you know, the authority of the court.”
The way the case was handled by the district attorney’s office up to the opening day of the trial is not in dispute. That the prosecution’s operation had run afoul of the new discovery-rule calendars is a matter of record. Nneji said that the deleterious effects of the rules that came into effect in 2020 had been cumulative. District attorneys’ office staff across the state had struggled to keep up.
“The workload was incredible,” said Nneji. “I mean, incredible. And because of that, you have assistant DAs who, you know, we all have our families and we do this work. It’s supposed to be a nine-to-five job, and all of a sudden it turned into seven-o’clock-in-the-morning-until-ten-o’clock-at-night job.”
Two ADAs handling the Snyder case resigned just months ahead of the trial. With the Snyder trial date only 27 days away, Nneji wrapped up another murder trial and dove into the Snyder trial.
“I had recently been appointed chief assistant and I said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go from my murder trial into this one,’” he explained. “The ADAs had been complaining that there was a lot to do. Okay, and there was a lot to do. They’re right. But they have had a lot of the materials from the beginning. I am just getting into the case, with about 27 days, you know, to trial. So I needed to study up on the case, review the same things that they had been reviewing and were complaining about. But, you know, we turned over everything that had not been turned over. And we asked for another two weeks for the defense to look through those items.”
Absolutely essential
Snyder’s defense attorney said they didn’t want a postponement, which Nneji thought was a tactical ploy.
“And then this is the clincher that killed everything,” Nneji recalled.
Because the prosecution hadn’t turned over expert-witness testimony to the defense in time, Rounds offered the defense three remedies from which to choose: first, granting an adjournment to review a expert witness disclosure; secondly, giving an adverse-inference charge; and third, limiting and precluding the scope of expert testimony offered by petitioner.
The defense chose the third option, effectively removing the identity of the defendant from the case.
That choice left Nneji no leg to stand on.
He explained why.
“In every case, we are required to prove one, that the crime occurred, and two, the person who committed the crime,” said Nneji. “If you cannot prove the identity of the person who committed the crime, you can never convict. So when they said, ‘Do not allow the prosecution to identify Raymond Snyder as the one who committed the crime’, the judge said, Okay, Mister Nneji, you can have your DNA experts testify, but they will not be allowed to testify that the DNA from the crime scene matched Raymond Snyder’s. The blood from the scene. That’s essential. Absolutely essential. And the blood that was obtained from the getaway car, you cannot point that it’s from Raymond Snyder. And the blood from where the murder weapon was stashed, we had the gun, you cannot say that it came from Raymond Snyder. Okay, then there’s no way we can identify him as the individual who committed the crime! Then what am I going into court to do? It’s a waste of the county’s time and resources. It’s just theater.”
No double jeopardy
The appellate court found in the district attorney’s office’s favor, “Without a case by petitioner, respondent could not dismiss the indictment,” they ruled. With no opening statement by a prosecutor, with no documentary evidence tendered, and with no witnesses called, no actual trial, in the American legal system’s sense of the word, had been held. And it couldn’t very well have been judged, even if a judge went ahead and did it anyway.
In the American system of jurisprudence, a defendant is presumed innocent until found guilty whether the existing evidence is suggestive or not. For Raymond Snyder, once accused of murder, it’s hard not to see how the emotional stress resulting from beating the accusations of one trial, only to have another trial rise again in its place, with the exact same charges, doesn’t qualify as the cruel and unusual punishment known as double jeopardy.
If it does resemble double jeopardy in any way, which the appellate judges say it does not, this situation would have to be laid at the bench of the honorable justice Bryan Rounds — morally speaking, not legally.
Eleven ADAs quit
The website of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York currently advertises jobs for assistant district attorneys in Ulster County. It reads:
“Salary and benefits: $83,000 and BOE [professional expenses and insurance premiums]. Ulster County provides excellent medical, dental and vision benefits to its employees, and vacation and sick time based upon time in service. Employees are also enrolled in the New York State retirement system, and may participate in other benefits, including using deferred compensation.”
Eleven assistant district attorneys quit in the first year and a half of the David Clegg administration after new state discovery laws took effect in January 2020. The overarching theme of all responses to a May 2021 state survey was lack of adequate staffing and financial resources to gather, review, compile and share an increased volume of materials during a significantly compressed time frame than previously mandated by state law.
The majority of the ADAs who stepped down in Ulster County had served under former Republican DA Holley Carnright. Five went to the public defender’s office. Criminal Procedure Law Article 245 (Discovery) established new, accelerated time frames for the sharing of evidence between the prosecution and defense during the pretrial period.
— Geddy Sveikauskas
Manny Nneji will be district attorney
Final count puts him 383 votes ahead of Mike Kavanagh
Plus ca change plus la meme chose, say the French. The more that changes, the more it’s the same thing.
In November 2019, Democrat Dave Clegg defeated Republican Mike Kavanagh in the race for Ulster County district attorney. The contest was close. Clegg received 26,333 votes to Kavanagh’s 26,255.
In November 2023, Democrat Manny Nneji, Clegg’s chief assistant district attorney, defeated Mike Kavanagh, now not enrolled in any political party. That race too was close. The final count released by the county elections board last week showed Nneji with 24,229 votes to Kavanagh’s 23,846.
Nneji ran on the Democratic (19,964 votes) and Working Families (4256) lines, Kavanagh on the Republican (19,242) and Conservative (4604) lines.
So much change occurred in the past four years that the similarity of the 2019 and 2023 results bears explanation. The considerable inflow of population into Ulster County from New York City caused by the Covid pandemic us reflected in the political enrollment numbers.
There were 52,850 enrolled Democrats in November 2023, as compared with 47,520 in 2019 – a gain of 5330. There were 28,273 enrolled Republicans, a gain of only 574 over the 27,699 of 2019.
Unlike in 2019, when both Clegg and Kavanagh had three lines each on the ballot, each had only two this year – Nneji the Democratic and Working Families lines and Kavanagh the Republican and Conservative lines. But as it turned out, Kavanagh inherited those 2269 voters on the Independence line who had supported him in 2019 – narrowing to some degree the political impact of the large influx of new Democrats.
The turnout factor also proved of benefit to Kavanagh. Historically, a higher proportion of Republicans show up to vote than do Democrats. It is also likely that fewer new Democratic enrollees show up on Election Day than longer-established Democrats — though there’s no evidence from this year’s numbers that this was true in this year’s race for district attorney.
There was also little evidence that the northern part of Ulster County consistently trended more Democratic in the DA race this year than four years ago. Though Nneji did proportionally better in many northern Ulster county towns – significantly in Saugerties, Rosendale, Ulster, Shandaken, Olive and New Paltz – Kavanagh did better in the City of Kingston (where the Republican-Conservatives received 342 fewer votes than in 2019, as contrasted with the Democratic loss of 777), Esopus, Marbletown and even Woodstock (where Nneji got 25 fewer votes than Clegg had, while Kavanagh improved his 2019 performance by 81 votes).
The Town of Gardiner, where there was a lively contest for town supervisor, held the distinction of more votes in both major parties in 2023 than in 2019. Shawangunk, which elected county legislature minority leader Ken Ronk as town supervisor, was the sole GOP major stronghold to increase its Kavanagh plurality in 2023.
The election is over. Starting in January, the Nigerian-born and New Paltz-educated Nneji will begin to serve the people of Ulster County for a four-year term in January in what he has described as his dream job, chief law-enforcement official of Ulster County.
According to the Ulster County government website, the district attorney has the sole responsibility for the prosecution of all crimes and offenses which occur within Ulster County.
— Geddy Sveikauskas
Join the family! 
