Murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor-vehicle theft. The troubled dreams of a district attorney are made of these. But not Emmanuel “Manny” Nneji’s. Ulster County’s 34th district attorney, Nneji has enough to worry about when he’s awake.
Over the next four years every crime committed in the county, quaint or foul, must be answered by his office. With the calendars of 22 justice courts to monitor — some like Rosendale’s town court meet monthly, others like Kingston city court meet daily — this is no easy task. Nneji has 20 full-time and four part-time assistant district attorneys (ADAs) to help carry the load.
The ceilings in Nneji’s spacious corner office in the county courthouse appear low enough to touch. The 205-year-old courthouse roof and façade is under renovation, so the views from the windows are hidden behind debris netting attached to scaffolding.
Nneji is not a flashy dresser. He’s wearing muted grey slacks and a blue pullover open at the collar revealing a yellow striped tie, Should he need to appear in the courtroom, all he needs to do is exchange the pullover for a sports coat.
Spurning the button-tufted, red-leather chairs, Nneji sits on a plain chair next to a wall of legal books as he explains the New York State court system.
“Every one of the 62 district attorneys in the state has discretion to determine what offenses to prosecute and which ones not to, and you have to exercise that discretion understanding what’s involved in each case,” Nneji says. “Once the police make an arrest, they have the person arraigned in the local court. That’s where everything begins.”
Those ADAs assigned to the various local courts are professionally qualified to assess the merits of each case and decide what prosecution would accomplish. Many low-level charges are dismissed. Because the caseload would otherwise be insurmountable, plea bargaining is common in the justice courts.
In 2023 there were 3403 arraignments in Ulster County, which if distributed evenly would equal 141 arrests per assistant district attorney.
“The whole idea is to prosecute cases and seek justice for the community,” explains Nneji. “Prior criminal history, severity of offense, different circumstances are taken into account to make a determination that perhaps ‘Okay, we will prosecute such and such offenses, and these are the ones we’re going to adjourn for six months’. And if the person doesn’t get into trouble, the case will be dismissed.”
As Nneji likes to say, the district attorney has a hammer, but that doesn’t mean that every defendant is a nail.
Carnright and Clegg
But some defendants are nails and must be hammered. For $202,800 a year, the second-highest-paying job in the county, the amount of compensation speaks to the expectations for the job.
In November, 24,220 constituents voted for Nneji to separate the non-violent wheat from the violent chaff, as it were, and burn the rest. And yet the expectations of the public can be underinformed as to the realities of the job.
In every year of his last term, 2016-2019, Republican Holley Carnright had more crimes to deal with than did David Clegg, his Democratic successor. In 2017, the high-water mark, there were 3151 misdemeanors and 1105 felonies to contend with.
Though Clegg had fewer crime numbers to grapple with, he had to deal with the disruptive systemic changes which arrived one after the other in 2020, his first year elected to office.
The first wave was the bail reform law, which swept across the entire state. Enacted by state politicians partly to honor the memory of Kalief Browder, a 17-year-old-sent to Riker’s Island and incarcerated there for three years without ever being proven guilty of his alleged crime, stealing a backpack, discretion in setting bail was removed from the judges.
Resentment among prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies turned to disbelief in the same year when the effects of new discovery laws, the second wave, went into effect.
“You turn discovery over,” grumbled one ex-ADA, “and you’re now filing all these certificates of compliance 16 pages long that you have to go through with a fine-tooth comb.”
Almost two years into Clegg’s term, 15 Ulster County assistant ADAs had quit. Sources agree that Clegg was not the favorite among law-enforcement agencies and many of the departing attorneys. Many who went over to the public defender’s office or into private practice would have preferred to work for chief assistant district attorney Mike Kavanagh, Clegg’s challenger for the job who lost the 2019 election to him by 78 votes. The departed lawyers had left Clegg’s operation massively depleted. The last wave, a worldwide pandemic, brought the already deteriorated situation to a grounding halt.
Nneji’s appointments
Nneji stayed on as an assistant district attorney with Clegg and would be promoted to chief assistant district attorney. Now a veteran of three decades of courtroom outcomes, seven of which were spent as an assistant attorney general at the state level, Nneji assembled his own staff and shape the operation by which history will judge him.
Elizabeth Culmone-Mills has been appointed chief assistant district attorney, the first female to hold that position. Culmone-Mills, who prefers to be recognized for her merits, nevertheless acknowledges the usefulness that representation plays for young girls seeing the shape of the world and drawing conclusions as to their potentialities in it.
Nneji promoted Paul V. Derohannesian to deputy chief assistant district attorney, Lauren E. Swan to executive assistant district attorney and Sajaa S. Ahmed to administrative assistant district attorney.
The work is long, the road troubled
For the past three years, excepting the week just before the election, Nneji says he has come to work every day, seven days a week. Even the days he wasn’t at the courthouse during working hours, he would arrive after nightfall.
“Even though you are not in the office all the time, it’s the kind of job that requires your presence all the time,” Nneji says. “It is truly a 24/7 job. You work nine to five in the office. You leave and you get a phone call about something that you need to go deal with. You need to go handle it.”
Nneji, who coaches young persons’ soccer teams, recalls the time he received a call on the sidelines.
“December 1 of 2018, it was a Saturday,” says Nneji. “I was coaching my girls’ team. Close to noon, I got a phone call that there was a shooting on Sawkill Road. And I was assigned to handle the case. I left there. You get a phone call, you have a murder, and you need to get on top of it.”
Said in court papers to be drug deal gone bad, this incident was the killing of Mark Lancaster.
“A year later, I convicted all the three individuals that were involved. One of them went to trial, Stansberry. A father and son, and the son testified against the father.”
Nneji has four murder trials on his radar so far that he will have to prosecute this year. The first trial involves the shooting death of Plattekill local Daniel Spotards on New Year’s Day. The body of the 41-year-old was found at the end of his driveway by a sanitation worker.
“Two defendants, Dawkins and Dawkins,” Nneji says. “Two brothers.”
The majority of the murders over the last decade have involved people who knew each other. Fathers and sons. Friends, competitors and would-be lovers. Almost never strangers.
Nicholas Pascarella Jr., for instance, was found guilty of beating his father to death with a baseball bat.
Or Johnny Amaro who lost control and then left his friend’s body in the woods before intending to jump off the Rhinecliff Bridge, where he lost his nerve at the railing.
If you do it, you’re done
“I don’t know if it’s been called crime for the whole existence of humanity but such conduct has always been part of human existence,” says Nneji. “In the old days, in the philosophical discussions by all the philosophers — Plato, Aristotle, and all those people — the whole idea of crime, what we have codified as criminal conduct, has always existed.”
Nneji expands on the idea, dividing crime into two kinds. The first, Malum in se, are crimes by their very nature immoral and offensive to our common human dignity. The second, Malum prohibitum, are crimes by virtue of their prohibition, like speeding, drug-taking, or selling loose cigarettes.
“The more serious violent crimes, those are the crimes that keep people awake. Those crimes that hurt you to your soul and take away the sense of security in the community, take away the sense of your freedom to move about and enjoy your community. Enjoy the sun, enjoy the air around you.”
A motivating drive within Nneji is to prevent crime involving young men and guns before it happens.
“I’m not sure if I’m communicating the sense of right and wrong. It’s inextricably linked,” says Nneji. “But the idea is this. I see young men, charged with serious crimes, walk into court with a swagger.
They are proud to be brought into court, you know, ‘Look at me, I’m a tough guy.’ Six months, eight months, twelve months later, at the time of sentencing you see them crying like babies, with the snot coming out of the nose, and it breaks your heart. I want these young people to see that and anticipate that consequence before they do what they were thinking to do. Is that morality? I don’t know.”
Nneji thinks you have to reach such people where they are, through social media or in person in classrooms, and attempt to give them the wisdom that when they terminate someone else’s life they are terminating their own as well.
“Because you’re going to be in prison for life. And they call it life in prison, but it’s not. There’s no life in prison.”
Three or four fewer shootings a year would make it worth the effort, in Nneji’s estimation.
“That’s three or four less people killed or seriously injured. That’s three or four less instances of the community being traumatized by the gunshots. Three or four instances of, you know, a kid hiding under the bed because they’re scared of what just happened.”
The airy discussion of philosophy and hopeful what-should-bes dissipate into the air of Nneji’s office, and Nneji is left with what is.
“It’s absolutely a key part of what I want to accomplish,” Nneji reiterates. “But when that happens, if the gun violence happens, I want everyone out there to understand, it’s going to be prosecuted with every legal power and authority that we have. We will prosecute them vigorously. It’s very important to communicate, ‘Hey, please, do not do it, but if you do it, you’re done.”
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