Hussain and his lawyers as well as Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallory and state Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch are all scheduled to appear in Schoharie County Court to lay the groundwork for the start of a trial that’s scheduled to begin May 1.
The court appearance will be held even as an appeals court weighs the legality of Lynch’s decision last year to invalidate Hussain’s earlier guilty plea — part of a deal that would have spared him from incarceration in the crash, which remains the nation’s largest mass-casualty transportation disaster in over a decade.
Hussain faces 20 counts each of criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter in connection with the Oct. 6, 2018, crash that ended in a ditch near a parking lot next to the Apple Barrel Country Store at the intersection of routes 30 and 30A. The driver, 17 passengers and two bystanders in the parking lot were killed.
Investigators say non-functioning brakes were to blame for the crash of the super-stretch limousine. Prosecutors say Hussain failed to maintain a safe vehicle and is to blame for the fatalities.
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Lynch’s Aug. 31 decision to toss the plea deal — an arrangement the families of the victims had viewed with scorn from the outset — shocked the Capital Region legal community and breathed new life into a criminal case that had appeared to be all but closed.
Hussain’s legal team, which contends it was blindsided by Lynch’s declaration, has appealed to the Appellate Division’s Third Department based in…
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