As limo trial set to start, families still await answers
sain, who prosecutors say allowed the ramshackle vehicle on the road that day.
Due to the regional notoriety of the calamity, it’s expected to take days before the judge and attorneys in the third-floor courtroom settle on the group of jurors capable of giving Hussain a fair trial.
There have been 1,500 jury summonses issued, which accounts for about 5 percent of the county’s total population of 29,000.
Another complicating factor in that effort: the large number of local emergency workers in the potential jury pool who witnessed the carnage at the crash scene.
Richardson-Perez said she is not afraid of what’s to come, no matter how hard it may be to relive the worst day of her life during the course of a trial that’s expected to run six weeks.
There have been many delays since Hussain was indicted in April 2019 on 20 counts each of criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter.
There was the COVID -19 pandemic and the forced closure of New York’s courts. That was followed by the 2021 nojail guilty plea deal Hussain struck with Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallery — a resolution that outraged the victims’ families and was thrown out last August by a judge who took over the case. And then there were the months of legal moves as Hussain’s lawyers waged a failed bid to have the original plea bargain restored.
Hussain’s legal team will try to convince jurors that a Saratoga Springs repair shop faked the brake repairs he had requested, leaving him unaware the vehicle’s safety was compromised before the crash, which killed all 18 people on board and two bystanders in a parking lot next to the Apple Barrel Country Store on Route 30A.
“I’m not nervous, because the truth is the truth,” said RichardsonPerez, who plans to take time off from work at a prison in Johnstown to attend court.
The trial will be overseen by Albany state Supreme
Court Justice Peter Lynch, who took over after the retirement of Schoharie County Court Judge George Bartlett III.
The limo’s driver, 53year-old Scott Lisinicchia, who also died in the crash, lost control of the white Excursion — which weighed nearly 7 tons when fully loaded with passengers — as it descended a steep section of Route 30. It sailed through the intersection with Route 30A at speeds faster than 100 mph and crashed across the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Country Store. State Police have blamed the crash on catastrophic brake failure.
Hussain’s high-powered legal team, which includes Albany attorney Lee Kindlon and celebrity defense attorney Joseph Tacopina and his law partner Chad Seigel, won’t be together when the trial starts.
Tacopina spent last week in a Manhattan courtroom defending Donald J. Trump in a civil trial in which the former president is accused of raping E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s.
That trial is expected to last at least through the coming week.
Tacopina and Seigel likely won’t be present for jury selection in Schoharie.
“They will join me when they’re done,” Kindlon told the Times Union.
“We have had a great working relationship for the past four years, and we are never more than a text, email or phone call apart from one another.”
Kindlon will also be aided remotely by his father, longtime local defense attorney Terence Kindlon, and the elder Kindlon’s wife and fellow lawyer Laurie Shanks.
“I’ve always had a good working relationship with them,” Lee Kindlon said. “Whether it’s prepping a closing argument around their dining room table or bouncing ideas off of them during a break in the trial, they’re a great resource.”
A scuttled deal
Hussain, who lives in a Colonie apartment complex with his brother Haris and fiance Melissa Bell, never expected to go to trial after his September 2021 guilty plea to the 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide. (The manslaughter charges were dropped pursuant to the deal.) Hussain agreed to receive five years of probation and complete 1,000 hours of community service. Bartlett handled the plea.
Hussain had completed a year of interim probation and half his community service hours when Lynch decided at his sentencing last August that the agreement was legally flawed, and that he would not abide by it.
Instead of risking being sentenced to up to five years in prison, Hussain took the immediate option of withdrawing his guilty plea and decided to go to trial. Kindlon appealed the case to the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court. The effort was rejected twice.
The prosecution’s case is built on the theory that Hussain failed to maintain the brakes on the Excursion and used a driver he knew wasn’t properly trained or licensed to drive passengers in a limo that size. The vehicle remained on the road even after Prestige Limousine of Wilton was repeatedly cited for serious infractions in the months before the crash by both the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the State Police.
Hussain’s legal team is likely to attempt to place the blame on others, including Mavis Discount Tire in Saratoga Springs, the auto repair shop that did brake work on the Excursion and inspected the limo in May 2018, just five months before the crash. A DMV investigation found that Mavis had committed fraud when it falsified an invoice for
brake work that wasn’t done on the limo and faked a safety inspection. Family members have brought civil actions against Mavis, which has denied its actions played a role in the crash.
The defense may also blame the state Department of Transportation and DMV, which have been cited by both state and federal investigators for failing to properly regulate Prestige. They are also expected to raise questions about the driver, Lisinicchia, who was found to have THC — the active chemical compound in marijuana — in his system at the time of the crash.
It’s also possible that Hussain’s attorneys will place the blame on Nauman Hussain’s father, Shahed Hussain, who legally owned the limo business but had left for Pakistan in early 2018, placing his son in charge. Shahed Hussain, a longtime FBI informant with a shady past, has never spoken publicly about the case, and has remained abroad despite his son’s legal jeopardy.
Although some legal observers note a lastminute guilty plea deal is possible, Kindlon says it’s not going to happen and he has not been negotiating with Mallery, the district attorney.
“No deal is in the works,” Kindlon said. “We are focused on picking a jury starting Monday morning.”
Pictures from the scene
At a recent pretrial hearing, Kindlon, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve who served in Iraq, said he was worried about the impact crash scene and autopsy images will have on the jury and their ability to give his client a fair trial. None of the passengers of the limo were wearing seat belts, and victims were found both inside and outside the limo. The