Saturday, December 11, 2021

What Happened in Kinderhook: Outcome

The Register-Star reports today that yesterday Judge Richard Koweek dismissed four of the charges against five defendants in the Harold Handy III assault case: "Judge dismisses gang assault, other charges in Handy case." As interesting as the article itself are the comments it elicited when the link was posted on Facebook this morning. Click here and scroll down.  

The incident, which occurred in the wee hours of July 5, 2020, was the subject of a two-part investigative report by Enid Futterman, published on imby.com: "The Party's Over: What Really Happened."

Photo: Zack Neven|imby.com

9 comments:

  1. Is this case being tried in Columbia County? Are there 12 potential jurors who are not familiar with the case? Does the USPS carrier just slide the summons under their rock?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought the Albany DA was looking into it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The article in imby.com is all based on "sources" with no real corroborating evidence. I don't even understand what the point of the article is unless it's to overuse the words "source" or "sources".

    In the case of the comments to R-S article, most of those come from the "usual suspects" who have an obvious axe to grind.

    Judge Koweek is an honorable man. It's my understanding that in order to dismiss any charges, doing so would have been in the interest of justice to all involved and that there was insufficient evidence presented to substantiate the charge(s).

    Gee, doesn't this stink of Jussie Smollette???

    Dollars to donuts, the majority of the commenters to the R-S article and Ms. Futterman all believe that the convicted would be actor and victim of a hate crime was railroaded and he couldn't possibly have lied.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How can you be accused of “lying”, when you end up beaten unconscious and nearly dead?!

      Delete
    2. Yeah, I'm not really seeing a line of equivalence here. Maybe because they were both in the news the same day?

      Delete
  4. Good Evening Not Peter Meyer.

    Do you agree that even "honorable" men area capable of making errors in judgment?

    Susan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There were 12 counts total (not sure how those were distributed amongst the defendants) so presumably the judge didn't feel like 4 of the charges met whatever evidentiary threshold is required to proceed with those 4 specific charges at trial.

      It does raise eyebrows (this is, after all, a high-profile case) but I'll echo the confidence of the anonymous commenter above- I've only heard good things about Koweek.

      Delete
  5. This is the most familiar case in Columbia County. what happens to the cases people dont talk about?

    ReplyDelete
  6. It is certainly interesting to note that this decision was announced on a Friday afternoon/evening. Political people who need to make unpopular announcements often opt to do so late on a Friday. That way, it hits the weekend news cycle, as opposed to the weekday news cycle.

    Susan

    ReplyDelete