By DEBORAH E. LANS
GHENT – Long-time District Attorney Paul Czajka is retiring this year, and two candidates are running for the four-year position of District Attorney of Columbia County: Ryan Carty and Chris Liberati-Conant.
The District Attorney is the county’s chief law enforcement officer and the office of the District Attorney prosecutes all criminal matters that arise in the county, from murder to traffic offenses. The DA’s office appears in all courts from the Supreme Court to County Court to the Hudson City Court and the various Town Courts. It also handles appeals.
Currently, there are seven lawyers in the DA’s office, including the District Attorney himself.
The two candidates were interviewed by the Columbia Paper and those interviews are reported below, in alphabetical order.
Ryan Carty
Mr. Carty, 33, grew up in Stuyvesant and now lives in Kinderhook. He has served in the Columbia County DA’s office since his graduation from law school in 2015, rising to the position of Deputy Chief. During law school, he worked as a law intern for the Office of the Attorney General (2013) and, for six months, as a law clerk for Columbia County Court Judge Jonathan Nichols.
Mr. Carty is not married and does not have children.
Mr. Carty believes he is the best qualified candidate because of his extensive experience as a criminal trial lawyer, having exclusively tried criminal cases for his eight years in the DA’s office of every type, ranging from traffic tickets to burglary to homicide. He knows how to evaluate which cases to try and which to resolve and what is entailed in each. His experience is rooted in Columbia County and the array of criminal matters that flows through the DA’s office here.
Mr. Carty says that he has also studied the rules of criminal procedure and evidence and then had the daily opportunity to put those rules into practice.
“I am not Paul Czajka. There is only one Paul Czajka. I want to be the best version of myself,” Mr. Carty said.
He believes the DA’s office can do more to engage the community, especially youth, with the aim of helping people before they “come into the system.” Once someone is arrested, the office should evaluate whether a second chance is appropriate, with assistance from groups like Twin Counties Recovery, and facilitate diversion.
Mr. Carty believes that the recently-reformed bail and discovery laws have often had the effect of encouraging people to proceed to trial, instead of considering treatment options and the hard work of overcoming addiction.
The District Attorney, by law, must consent to an accused’s being transferred to a treatment court, although the ultimate decision is one for the court. Mr. Carty says that in the past two years he has never declined to consent to a referral to treatment court.
Mr. Carty says he will advocate for enhanced mental health services for the county, as often crimes are the result of an addiction or other underlying problem.
In 2022, Mr. Carty was criticized by County Court Judge Nichols for intentionally and unlawfully withholding evidence from an accused murderer concerning a key prosecution witness. As reported in the Times Union (https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/Quick-acquittal-of-man-in-Columbia-County-murder-17564374.php), the court found “that the (prosecution’s) failure to provide such materials cannot be characterized as a good faith mistake or benign neglect.”
When asked about the case, Mr. Carty was unable to comment, because a state law both seals the court files of a person acquitted of a crime and precludes law enforcement from discussing the case. He did comment that he has been responsible for formulating and implementing the county’s system for complying with the disclosure rules enacted by the Legislature in 2020 and that, since that time, no case has been dismissed in the county for failure to comply with those rules.
Mr. Carty pledges that, if elected, he “will prosecute cases without fear or favor,” to ensure the safety of county residents.
Mr. Carty graduated from Syracuse University and Albany Law School.
Mr. Carty has been endorsed by the Republican and Conservative parties and “every local police union.”
His website is ryancartyforda.com.
Chris Liberati-Conant
Mr. Liberati-Conant, 46, is a resident of Chatham. Since March 2023, he has been in the private practice of law. Prior to March and starting in 2018 Mr. Liberati-Conant was employed with the New York State Office of the Attorney General. From 2018 to 2022 he served as an Assistant Attorney General in the office Litigation Bureau. From 2022-23 he was an Assistant Solicitor General in the Division of Appeals and Opinions.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Liberati-Conant served as the Principal Court Attorney to Judge Denise Hartman in the Supreme Court, Albany County (2015-18), as Senior Attorney for Mental Hygiene Legal Services in Poughkeepsie (2011-15) and as a Court Attorney to the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court (2009-2011).
Mr. Liberati-Conant is married and has an eight year old son.
Mr. Liberti-Conant believes that he is the most qualified candidate because of the depth, range and quality of his legal and life experience, having handled hundreds of hearings and felony-level trials on a broad array of issues, being deeply familiar with the appeals process and having administrative experience as well.
Mr. Liberati-Conant says that he will make a number of changes if elected. First, he will end political hiring. He says that politics should not matter at the DA’s office, and he will not let anyone in the current DA’s staff go, notwithstanding their party affiliations. He will hire based purely on merit. He says the office has been challenged in hiring for open slots because of its current policies.
His office will be open to criticism and will listen and learn from it, rather than attacking critics. He will work to establish better relationships with the community, partnering with providers of mental health and drug treatment services and altering the “rude” and “aggressive” tone of the office.
Mr. Liberati-Conant would like to organize the DA’s office into “bureaus,” where assistant DAs have areas of specialization. He will increase training, bringing in outside resources. He says that several important cases have been lost due to avoidable legal errors.
In addition, he will establish a climate of professional independence, where not all decisions are centralized and controlled by the DA, which will also increase office efficiency.
Mr. Liberati-Conant cited the current office system for handling traffic tickets as an example of the type of interaction he will change. Currently tickets are handled entirely on line. A very aggressive message cuts off all communication between the office and those summoned, requiring them to accept the deal offered by the DA or go to trial. The system discriminates against those who cannot use or lack access to a computer and is also not user-friendly. It displays a “hostility” that Mr. Liberati-Conant thinks is unfortunate.
Mr. Liberati-Conant says his priorities will be to treat crime victims with respect but also seek to attack the drug and mental health epidemics by increasing access to treatment. He says he will also form an organized crime bureau to stop drugs and violence at their source.
He cites his experience as 2nd Lieutenant in the Village of Chatham Fire Department as an example of how people of all backgrounds and views can and should work together. He will bring that same attitude to the DA’s office.
Mr. Liberati-Conant graduated from Rutgers University and St. John’s University School of Law, magna cum laude.
He has been endorsed by the Democratic party.
His website is chris4da.com.