Mark Mahoney

Litigation Milestones

Since the early 1980's Mark was among a handful of top criminal trial lawyers in Western New York, instantly recognizable as one of the two lawyers appointed in 1981 to represent Joseph Christopher. Christopher, an Army private then in Fort Benning, was known here as the ".22 Caliber Killer" and in New York City as the "Midtown Slasher." Arising out of the murders of 11 black and brown skinned persons in Buffalo and New York City in 1980, the multi-million dollar investigation leading up to the highly publicized trial was the largest in upstate New York history.
Among numerous felony jury trials, many of which were conducted as assigned counsel, the best known are the trials of Daniel Morrison, publicity director of the Irish political party, Sinn Fein, and Joseph Christopher.
Morrison and Owen Carron, both elected members of the Irish Parliament, were tried in Federal Court on charges arising out of their attempt to enter the United States in January of 1982 to express their views about the situation in Northern Ireland and to protest the history of restrictions on the issuance of visas to Irish Republicans.

"Firsts"

Mr. Mahoney obtained the reversal on appeal of the conviction of Dr. Heinz Golitschek, the Austrian who was extradited from Canada to the United States and then convicted on charges of attempting to smuggle $60 million worth of military helicopters to Iran. This was the first case in the country where the "Iran-Contra" scandal was raised to attack a criminal conviction.
Mr. Mahoney was the first in a case involving infanticide to raise the existence of the "battered child syndrome" to successfully avoid a murder conviction, in the trial in Buffalo of Stanley Zamiela, in 1981. In January of 1988, in rural Fulton County, New York, exposing the "battered spouse syndrome," he obtained the first complete acquittal in a case of this kind in New York State.
He was the first to introduce a computer simulation in a criminal case in New York, and possibly the entire nation, in his successful 1989 defense of a truck driver accused in a multi-fatality tractor-trailer rollover collision. In that case he was hired by the national food distribution chain on the recommendation of its local corporate and liability counsel -- two of the largest law firms in the city. His investigation and theory of defense, buoyed by the computer simulation which he helped design, not only resulted in the acquittal of the driver, but the exposure of liability on the part of another company which loaded the trailer. That company would later contribute substantially to the multi-million dollar civil settlement.
In the same year he represented a Buffalo fireman who argued that he acted in self defense when he shot police officers executing a search warrant at his home, believing that they were burglars. Only after persistent scouring of the 16 track "911" tapes was a call by the defendant's girlfriend to the police finally discovered by our office; digital enhancement of the tape together with voiceprint analysis provided sufficient support for the defense that there was an acquittal.
On behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Mr. Mahoney authored the successful amicus curiae brief in People v. Bigelow, the landmark New York Court of Appeals case in 1985 which foreclosed the use of the "Good Faith" exception to the exclusionary rule in New York and which has been followed extensively in other jurisdictions. Mr. Mahoney’s brief was the only one submitted in the case advancing the arguments accepted by the Court of Appeals.

Publications

In 1994 West Publishing Co., the largest legal publisher in the United States, announced the release of Mark Mahoney's "New York Criminal Defense Motions," an electronic publication of hundreds of motions, forms, and memoranda for use by criminal practitioners. The 600 page manuscript has been reduced to three computer discs in West's \FAST format, and is marketed to lawyers throughout New York. This publication grew out of Mr. Mahoney’s "Whole Motion Catalog", a widely circulated motion practice manual for criminal defense attorneys in New York State.
Mr. Mahoney's publications include a chapter in the book The Y Chromosome, entitled "XYY: Science and the Development of the Criminal Law." The book is edited by Dr. Avery Sandberg who discovered the XYY Syndrome more than twenty years ago.
He is author of two separate chapters in the leading publication on criminal practice in New York, published by the New York State Bar Association. The book, entitled "Basic Criminal Practice", is updated annually and has chapters authored by Mr. Mahoney on motion practice and jury instructions, the latter most unusual because of its emphasis on the use of psycholinguistic research to make jury instructions comprehensible to jurors.
His monograph entitled "The Right to Present a Defense" (1994) has been widely distributed by the New York State Defenders Association.
Additional current monographs include the "Hornbook on Computer Communications" which was published by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, where Mr. Mahoney also served as a System Operator (SYSOP) of the NACDL BBS located in Dallas, and "Microcomputer Litigation Support and Document Production" (1991) (Distributed privately).
Mr. Mahoney's most recent national speaking engagements were at the National Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers Fall meeting in Atlanta (1998). Other recend speaking engagements were at the American Bar Association Annual meeting in Chicago, and this Spring at the Annual Meeting of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Palm Beach, involving a presentations on the Use of Computers to Organize the Law Office, the Lawyer, and the Case. He also spoke recently to the Canadian bar at a program at Osgoode Hall concerning the presentation and challenging of expert evidence.
Most recently, with the reintroduction of the death penalty in New York, Mr. Mahoney has been certified by the Capital Defender Office and has already been appointed to represent an accused person in death penalty cases in New York. Harrington & Mahoney defended the third death penalty case to be tried since capital punishment was reinstated in New York in 1995. Mr. Mahoney has authored three separate monographs directed to the New York Court of Appeals entitled "A Schedule of Fees for Capital Defense" (I-III), the most substantial contributions to that Court on the question of what compensation was required for defense lawyers in capital cases. He is the leading plaintiff and counsel in the case of Mahoney v. Pataki which seeks to compel the governor of New York to honor the complete fee schedule for capital cases which was approved by the Court of Appeals. He prepared a set of proposed death penalty jury instructions for the Criminal Jury Instructions Committee of the New York Office of Court Administration, and has coauthored a monograph to be used by the Capital Defender Office for the training and guidance of lawyers regarding jury selection in capital cases, upon which a substantial portion of the pertinent 1999 revision of the California Death Penalty Defense Manual were modeled.

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