NO NEW TRIAL FOR TANKLEFF
Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota won’t seek another trial against vindicated parent killer Martin Tankleff, reports Newsday. Although Tankleff was recently released from prison after an Appellate Division panel found that new evidence in the case had been mishandled by Spota’s office, Spota had been demure on his intentions, if not about his attitude towards the crime: He still says Tankleff’s contention that a business associate of his father hired a contract killer to avoid repaying a $500,000 debt is “just not supported by the credible evidence.” Nevertheless, Newsday reports that Spota will ask Governor Eliot Spitzer to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Tankleff’s allegation. “It’s finally here, 20 long years," said Tankleff, now 36. “I’m relieved, but I never should've been charged in the first place.”

CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES 
Elsewhere, The New York Times reports that Eastern District Magistrate Judge Viktor Pohorelsky has issued a ruling conferring the same right to protect confidential sources on human rights groups like Amnesty International that journalists currently use. Specifically, Pohorelsky said Amnesty International didn’t have to disclose the names of lawyers quoted anonymously in a report being videotaped while talking to their clients in prison — part of a broader lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society on behalf of attorneys who say New York jail officials secretly taped their conversations with prisoners after 9/11. Attorneys for the defense had sought for the disclosure. “Amnesty is part of the press in terms of gathering information and disseminating it; they serve that function,” said Wallace Neel, a lawyer representing Amnesty International.

"HOME STATE" PROVISION CHALLENGED 
The New York Law Journal has a story about a divided Appellate Division decision that aims to further define the parameters of a child’s “home state” in custody battles under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. The panel reversed a decision by Family Court Judge Karen I. Lupuloff that held New York courts had no jurisdiction to reverse an Italian Court’s decision to award a woman custody of her son and the right to live either in Italy or the United States. She is Italian, and her son has dual citizenship, but the child had lived only nine months out of three-plus years on American soil. (Section 76 of the custody law defines a child’s “home state” as the state or country in which a child has lived with a parent for a minimum of six consecutive months immediately before the initiation of a custody proceeding.) But after the woman fled to Italy before a New York court ruling that found she’d fabricated claims of abuse to prevent the child’s father's visitation rights, the Appellate Division reversed, writing “[W]hile the court below made much of the Italian order granting the mother the choice of where to live with [her son], it erred in concluding that the choice of residence locations also gave the mother a choice of jurisdictions, and that New York therefore lost its jurisdiction when the mother left for Italy. . . . Here, there is uncontroverted evidence that the parties, mother, father and child were living in New York since January 2005, a period of 19 months prior to the mother's petition for a modification of the initial custody order, and 22 months prior to the father's cross petition for sole custody. Thus, the record established that New York has jurisdiction in this custody modification proceeding.”

THIS JUDGE HAS A HISTORY 
Finally, The Tonawanda News has a piece about Tonawanda Mayor Ronald Pilozzi’s politically-motivated appointment of former city Republican committeeman Mark Saltarelli as an acting judge. In 1995 Saltarelli was charged with blackmailing then-Republican committee chairman Bob Gregg into endorsing his candidacy for city attorney by saying he would expose the fact that the chairman and his wife owed $485 in state taxes from 1993. Saltarelli was acquitted of the charges after a non-jury trial. In his verdict, then-City Judge David G. Jay called Saltarelli’s actions “coward(ly),” “impudent,” “arrogant” and “mean-spirited." Today, Jay Tonawanda’s Deputy City Attorney says, “It’s a very serious criminal accusation against a leading member of the community, and the case raises not only criminal issues but issues of ethics and character. It is a very troubling case and should be viewed by everyone seriously.” “Politics is what it is,” Saltarelli has said. “The people who make big issues out of stuff like this are usually political people to begin with.”