Rockland DA Tries To Remove Lawyer For Hanukkah Attack Defendant

NEW CITY, NY — Rockland County District Attorney Thomas E. Walsh, II announced Tuesday that his office has asked the County Court for an order disqualifying Michael H. Sussman, Esq. from representing Grafton Thomas, the man accused in the Dec. 28 Hannukah machete attack.

"Mr. Sussman is now a civilian witness in this case by conducting a 'search' and removing 'evidence' (that goes to his alleged defense) from a home that defendant may have occupied several years ago," Walsh said in a statement.

Sussman has until Feb. 11 to file a response with the court.

"I'm deeply flattered and I expect to remain on the case," Sussman told Patch.

Prosecutors allege that about 100 people were at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Rockland County the night that Thomas entered, slashed four people, then fled. A fifth person was injured in the melee. He was arrested in New York City later that night.

Police and the FBI quickly searched Thomas's home in Greenwood Lake, where he was living with his mother.

However, they did not go to his former home, an isolated cabin in Wurtsboro. Sussman, investigators from his office, Thomas's mom Kim Kennedy, and Kennedy's pastor, the Rev. Wendy Paige, visited the cabin four days later.

"I went to Wurtsboro not knowing what I would find," Sussman said. What they found was so much that could be pertinent to the case, he said, that they packed it up rather than leaving it there in an unsealed environment. He had someone videotape everything they did, he said, plus he had a forensic investigator archive it all. They told the Rockland County DA's Office about it all, he said during a press conference the next day.

Sussman, whose practice is based in the Hudson Valley, has had many high-profile cases in his career, many of them revolving around civil rights, such as the landmark desegregation lawsuit in Yonkers. More recently he represented the parents of D.J. Henry, the Pace University student shot by one policeman as he was trying to obey another; and he now represents parents in Rockland County opposed to mandatory vaccines for school children. He told reporters that Grafton Thomas was repeatedly failed by the system over his extensive history of mental illness and his family's attempts to secure help.

SEE: No Signs Of Anti-Semitism In Thomas's Wurtsboro Cabin: Lawyer