Lawyer Who Worked for NY State Is Charged with Hate Crimes
Updated: An Albany lawyer who worked for the state of New York has been indicted on hate crimes charges, allegedly for making threatening phone calls to his neighbors and using racial slurs.
Prosecutors say the lawyer, 58-year-old James Hennessey Jr., used www.bluffmycall.com in an effort to hide that he was the source of the calls, made last summer, the Albany Times Union reports. He is a longtime lawyer with the state Department of Civil Service.
Court papers accuse Hennessey of calling a black woman and threatening to kill her. In another call, he is accused of telling a Hispanic man with a dark-skinned nephew that he would kidnap the “little black boy and tie him up.” Hennessey was identified as a suspect through cell phone documents and his cable account, the story says.
Hennessey earns $104,000 a year. A civil service spokesperson told the newspaper he remains on the job because he has not been convicted and the alleged wrongdoing did not occur at work.
Hennessey’s subsequent conviction was vacated in December 2014 because the hate-crime harassment statute was found to be unconstitutional in an unrelated case, according to an April 2016 appeals court decision in his bid for reinstatement to the bar.
Hennessey had previously sought to vacate his conviction on the ground that he suffers from a mental illness and was under the influence of psychotropic medications when he entered his guilty pleas. An appeals court said Hennessey should get a chance to prove his mental capacity was impaired and remanded the case in November 2013.
Updated April 19, 2023, at 12:52 p.m. to include subsequent developments.
