Resident urges Clinton County Legislature to investigate district attorney over courtroom conduct

Dr. Gregory Heismann, a resident who identified himself at the start of the meeting, used his allotted public-comment time to allege misconduct by the county district attorney and urged the Clinton County Legislature to investigate.

"My name is doctor Gregory Heismann," Heismann said. He described a recent encounter in which he said the district attorney "threaten[ed] to remove someone from a public building for simply questioning why he is not following a state procedural code of the Van Sickle doctrine." He said the DA's response to public questioning and a subsequent confrontation — including, Heismann alleged, the DA calling a sheriff's deputy on his personal cell phone — showed a poor regard for public accountability.

Heismann urged legislators to press the district attorney at a public meeting and, if they find his conduct unacceptable, to "push the state with articles of impeachment, or . . . the governor to remove him from office and make a threshold election," saying the DA's actions could ultimately cost the county "millions of dollars." He described the underlying dispute as involving interpretation of what he called the "Van Sickle doctrine," which he tied to prosecution procedures and a New York State court decision.

The comment period ended with no direct response from the legislature recorded in the transcript. The legislature proceeded to committee reports and the evening's docket of resolutions.

The allegation is a citizen's public comment, not a formal complaint filed in county records, and no response from the district attorney is recorded in the meeting transcript. The legislature did not take any formal investigatory action on the record during this session.