HUDSON — The new judge in the beating case of mechanic Harold Handy has stated his willingness to split the case in two.
Handy sustained injuries at a July 4, 2020, party at the home of a sheriff’s deputy that put him in intensive care at Albany Medical Center. Four people — Columbia County Sheriff’s Deputy Kelly Rosenstrach; her husband, gym owner Alex Rosenstrach; IRS agent Bryan Haag; and local contractor Corey Gaylord — were initially indicted on gang assault charges in the case, but the top charges were dropped by Judge Richard Koweek in late 2021. The defendants now face a single felony count of unlawful imprisonment, as well as several misdemeanors.
The case became severely complicated in November when allegations came to light that Handy’s civil attorney and a civil attorney for at least one of the defendants had discussed the prospect of a settlement conditioned on the defendants not being indicted — a deal that would raise serious ethical concerns and the specter of witness tampering. Those revelations scuttled what had been anticipated as the first day of jury selection.
The four were ultimately indicted, and there is no evidence the payoff to Handy went through. A special prosecutor is examining whether the settlement negotiations violated the law; the beating case was reassigned to a new judge, state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Marcelle..
In a Wednesday hearing, Stephen Coffey and Paul DerOhannesian, respectively the criminal defense attorneys for Gaylord and Haag, asked Marcelle to sever their clients’ cases from the Rosenstrachs’.
Coffey said Gaylord had nothing to do with alleged payoff talks between the civil attorneys, and told the judge a jury would naturally conflate any evidence concerning that matter with his client’s case.
In the minutes of November’s clsoed-door conversation between Columbia…
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