Repeated defaults in the cases of two different clients has brought an attorney a public reprimand and a two-year ban from practicing as Criminal Justice Act counsel before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The decision came less than two years after the circuit privately reprimanded Albany attorney Gaspar Castillo for numerous defaults on a separate criminal appeal.
Castillo, who has been with the state bar since 1981 and Second Circuit bar since 1983, ran into trouble in United States v. Morgan, 12-3231, where he had a number of defaults that led the Second Circuit to remove him from the case of Steven Ray Morgan, who had been sentenced to serve 20 years in prison in the Northern District on guns and narcotics charges.
The circuit appointed a new lawyer, Jane Simkin Smith, who persuaded Judges Dennis Jacobs, Guido Calabresi and Wesley that Northern District Judge Thomas McAvoy erred when he allowed into the trial death threats Morgan made against a government informant.
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