In the roughly 18 months that attorney Daniel Arshack has represented a Bronx woman charged with murdering her husband, he has been adamant that one piece of evidence would prove crucial to her defense: notes taken by caseworkers who interviewed her children in the days after the 2015 knifing.

Arshack said those notes would “completely support” the defense claim of his client, known as Yanny M. in court papers. But he was not allowed to see the notes until last week, when the Appellate Division, First Department, recognized his client's First and Sixth Amendment rights to share them within the confines of her attorney-client relationship. He received the notes on Thursday.

And still today, if Arshack and his client were located in the Second Department, rather than in the First Department, he would not be allowed to view the “progress notes” from the city's Administration for Children's Services (ACS).