Long-time Long Island Defender Honored

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NYSDA's 2025 Wilfred R. O'Connor Award Recipient Kent Moston with NYSDA Executive Director Susan Bryant

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY (08/01/2025) (readMedia)-- Kent Moston, the Director of Training at the Legal Aid Society of Suffolk County and retired Attorney in Chief of the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County, was honored on Monday during the Annual Meeting and Conference of the New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA). Moston accepted NYSDA's 2025 Wilfred R. O'Connor Award at a luncheon ceremony.

Moston began his public defense career in 1975, as a staff attorney with Nassau Legal Aid, defending clients charged with misdemeanors and felonies and preparing and arguing appeals. He became Chief of the Appeals Bureau in 1986 and head of the full office in 2001. "Kent assumed the reins of the Legal Aid Society at a critical juncture, when the Society's financial circumstances were bleak and the office's very survival was in peril," said current Attorney in Chief Scott Banks. "[B]ecause of Kent's steadfast leadership the [office] survived, maintaining its role as the primary provider of excellent indigent legal services in Nassau County," Banks added.

Rick Ellman, Nassau County Legal Aid Society's long-time and former County Court Bureau Chief, supervised Moston as a staff attorney and worked with him throughout Moston's work in Nassau County. Ellman said that Moston "was the Legal Aid Society's encyclopedic law man, who knew everything, literally everything," relevant to the program's work. His concluding comment about Moston was that "our attorneys and clients reaped incalculable benefits of his genius, legal talent and gifts."

As a Chief Defender, Moston pressed for the resources needed to provide quality representation not only in Nassau County but statewide. He participated with NYSDA in budget advocacy at the state level and efforts to further the provision of client-centered representation.

After retiring from Nassau Legal Aid in 2016, Moston took his current position. Laurette D. Mulry, Attorney-in-Charge at Suffolk Legal Aid, said that Moston-the first person she hired-"has proven to be an invaluable resource for our Appeals Bureau, our trial attorneys, and countless classes of new attorney hires." Moston's "mentorship is without equal," Mulry continued, noting that "[h]e has guided us through the highs, and lows, of criminal justice reform and many a Supreme Court term." Noting that this year marks "Kent's 50th year of dedicated service to Legal Aid," Mulry said his "legacy is not just measured in years, but in the countless lives he has influenced through his integrity, intellect and unshakeable belief in access to justice."

Moston has a wealth of experience in educating lawyers. He is a former adjunct professor of Political Science at CW Post College/LIU and a frequent lecturer on criminal law and procedure at the Nassau and Suffolk Academies of Law, the Suffolk County Criminal Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and NYSDA. In 2005, NYSDA's Managing Attorney wrote to Moston about his U.S. Supreme Court Update presentation, saying, "You were not only knowledgeable, but a really engaging presenter" and expressing "hope that you will be willing to present again next year and the year after that, and the one after that ...." Kent was willing, and his Update consistently earned praise like this: "Awesome, make this lecture longer!" (2007); and "Kent Moston did a great job again" (2017).

The Wilfred R. O'Connor Award is named for a founding member of the Defenders Association who was its president from 1978 to 1989. He believed every defendant, regardless of race, color, creed, or economic status, deserves a day in court and zealous client-centered representation.

NYSDA is a not-for-profit membership organization that provides support to lawyers and programs who provide legal representation to people who cannot afford to hire an attorney in criminal or certain family court matters. The Association receives State funding to provide training, publications, and other services to public defense attorneys. NYSDA's mission is to improve the quality and scope of publicly supported legal representation.