Ex-Suffolk prosecutor Glenn Kurtzrock, accused of misconduct, trying to get law license back, filings show

A former Suffolk prosecutor who resigned in disgrace in 2017 after he was accused of withholding documents from defense attorneys is attempting to get his law license reinstated — but a group of lawyers and law professors is trying to block his return to practicing law.

A New York appellate court denied Glenn Kurtzrock’s motion seeking readmission to the state bar on Dec. 5, but allowed him to try again in three months, according to court papers. Kurtzrock withheld documents from defense counsel in 16 cases, according to a report released in 2021 by then-Suffolk District Attorney Timothy Sini, including 12 homicide cases.

Five murder charges were dismissed after Kurtzrock’s misconduct was discovered, and the murder conviction of a man who had served six years of a 75-years-to-life prison sentence was thrown out.

"Mr. Kurtzrock committed egregious prosecutorial misconduct, demonstrating a lack of character and fitness to practice law," three New York defense attorneys and a Washington civil rights lawyer said in a letter filed on March 30 with the Grievance Committee for the 10th Judicial District, which investigates complaints of attorney misconduct in Nassau and Suffolk counties. "Given Mr. Kurtzrock’s documented pattern of misconduct, it would not be in the public interest to reinstate him to the practice of law."

The letter from the four attorneys — Peter Santina, of Civil Rights Corps, a Washington nonprofit organization; New York City lawyers Laura Solinger and Marvin Schechter; and Russell Neufeld, a retired public defender — follows a letter sent earlier in March by six law professors to the state’s Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct, an agency created in 2021 to investigate complaints against prosecutors. The law professors want the former prosecutor disbarred.

"This person repeatedly, deliberately lied and withheld evidence in a life-ruining way," Cynthia Godsoe, of Brooklyn Law School, one of the professors who signed the letter, told Newsday in a phone interview.

Godsoe said prosecutors who engage in official misconduct are rarely disciplined. "There’s no accountability and they often get promoted, because they are winning high-profile cases, winning convictions," she said.

The letter from the attorneys to the grievance committee said officials who suspended Kurtzrock’s license did not consider evidence that Kurtzrock had withheld documents from lawyers for Shawn Lawrence, a North Amityville man whose 2015 second-degree murder conviction was dismissed after he served six years of his sentence. Solinger was Lawrence's appellate attorney and later represented him in a lawsuit filed against Suffolk County. The lawsuit was settled in 2023 for $3.85 million.

Kurtzrock’s attorney, David Besso, told Newsday that the lawyers and legal scholars who are attempting to bar his client’s return to the profession are engaged in a witch hunt and don’t know all the facts.

"He never did anything intentionally, which is an important factor," Besso said. "Mens rea (Latin for 'guilty mind’) is an important factor in many cases, especially when you are dealing with ethics cases."

Kurtzrock served in the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office from 2004 to 2017, working in the homicide bureau for the last seven years of his tenure.

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said in a statement that Kurtzrock was fired by a previous administration, and any information his office has about the disgraced prosecutor’s resignation comes from media reports.

"At this point, as this attorney may presumably be appearing as opposing counsel representing defendants in our cases, it would not be proper to comment further," Tierney said.

Kurtzrock’s fall from grace began in 2017 during the trial of Messiah Booker, of Farmingdale, after Booker’s attorney discovered the prosecutor deliberately withheld evidence that at least two other men might have been responsible for the killing.

Murder charges against Booker and three co-defendants were dropped, and they pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Kurtzrock was immediately forced to resign by then-District Attorney Thomas Spota. (Two years later, a Suffolk jury convicted Spota of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and other charges for his role in the cover-up of a beating of a handcuffed prisoner.)

The issue was referred to a state grievance committee and in 2020, the Appellate Division suspended but did not revoke Kurtzrock’s license to practice law. The opinion concluded that there was no evidence that Kurtzrock engaged in similar misconduct in other cases.

But eight months later, Lawrence's 2015 second-degree murder conviction was dismissed after evidence emerged that Kurtzrock had withheld evidence from his defense team.

In 2021, Sini’s office released a report on the multiyear investigation into Kurtzrock conducted by its Conviction Integrity Bureau and New York Law School’s Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic. Sini said at the time that it was believed to be the first public review issued by a district attorney's office of a prosecutor’s compliance with evidence disclosure obligation.

"Prosecutors are given special deference," Godsoe said. "What is unusual in this case is both the extent of the misconduct and the proof of it. The former DA did what most DAs don’t do, who usually sort of protect their own. He really did the right thing."