With an election just around the corner, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is not having the best month. First a Federal judge ruled that a wrongfully-convicted man can sue the DA's office in regards to his treatment, and today the Post points out that apparently five of Hynes's ADAs live in New Jersey, despite the fact that they are required by law to live in New York. Oops!
"All Kings County assistant district attorneys must live within the state of New York," Brooklyn DA spokesman Jerry Schmetterer confirmed to the Post, before explaining that four of the Garden State attorneys had been living there before Hynes took office (in 1989) and remained there because Hynes "did not want to cause a hardship to their families by asking them to move." A fifth employee apparently got special permission from Hynes to live there for "compelling personal reasons."
All of which doesn't really bother us (as long as it isn't hurting their work). But this isn't the first time residency and Hynes have made headlines.
In 2005 an opponent of Hynes noted that Assistant DA John O’Mara, chief of the unit that investigates questionable convictions, and others were living out of the city. And despite the fact that, as O'Mara put it to the Post, "nobody's denying" these people live where they do, nothing really seemed to come of it. Perhaps that's because Hynes has his own residency issues, what with the "summer home" he keeps in Breezy Point (as opposed to his Bay Ridge "primary" home).
Perhaps this year, with Hynes being nipped at the heels by Manhattan ADA Abe George and former federal prosecutor Ken Thompson, this may play out a little differently.
