Steuben County First Assistant Public Defender Receives Award

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A 2024 Kevin M. Andersen Award Recipient, Casey Rogers, First Assistant, Steuben County Public Defender’s Office, with NYSDA Deputy Director Natalie Brocklebank, and Public Defender Shawn Sauro

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY (07/25/2024) (readMedia)-- Casey E. Rogers, First Assistant Public Defender, Steuben County Public Defender's Office, received a 2024 Kevin M. Andersen Memorial Award from the New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA) on July 22nd. Presented at NYSDA's 57th Annual Meeting and Conference, the award recognized Rogers for her high-quality legal work, leadership, generosity, and commitment to and respectful treatment of all clients.

Rogers was nominated for the award by Public Defender Shawn Sauro. He described Rogers as "compassionate and passionate about our clients" and an "immensely skilled trial attorney" who "is the epitome of model trial advocacy." Rogers has been responsible for managing the office's rapidly growing staff, Sauro said. He called Rogers "a role model and mentor to our up-and-coming attorneys" as well as a leader to all. One young attorney told Sauro, in discussing public defense practice, "I want to be the best...I want to be Casey Rogers."

NYSDA staff have observed and admired Rogers' fight for proper implementation of the discovery reforms of 2019; she has availed herself and her office of NYSDA's resources and then passed along what she learned to others. Deputy Director Natalie Brocklebank observed that "Casey has been a true advocate for her clients and has tirelessly worked to ensure the spirit of new reforms are followed." Rogers "would share her insights about the local landscape of how the courts were interpreting the changes" as she and Brocklebank talked. When those interpretations were counter to defense arguments, Brocklebank noted, "rather than feeling defeated or hopeless, [Rogers] turned her healthy outrage into creative and compelling arguments without giving up." As Rogers began to see positive results, she always followed up "to ensure that any good decisions that have come out of her jurisdiction are shared with her colleagues as well as the larger defender community."

NYSDA Staff Attorney Maxwell Kampfner observed that Rogers, while "[p]racticing in a perfect storm of haphazard discovery reform implementation and unprecedented pandemic curtailments of due process rights ... won numerous motions" on discovery issues. She successfully obtained for clients the rights established by the reforms, doing so "in a judicial and prosecutorial setting that started out skeptical, if not overtly hostile, to her efforts," Kampfner said.

Sauro's nomination of Rogers for the award said that "Casey has been instrumental in changing the culture and perception of public defense in Steuben County." Sauro knows the difficulty involved in creating an office dedicated to providing client-centered representation; last year he accepted a NYSDA award on behalf of his office for working continuously to invoke and enforce discovery reform. Casey Rogers has helped make sure such excellence continues.

The Kevin M. Andersen Memorial Award is presented to an attorney who has been in practice less than fifteen years, who practices in public defense, and who exemplifies the sense of justice, determination, and compassion that were the hallmarks of its namesake, a lawyer at the Genesee County Public Defender's Office.