LOCKPORT — The start of a Niagara Falls murder trial was put on hold Wednesday after attorneys with the Niagara County Public Defenders Office admitted other lawyers in their office had created a potential conflict of interest by representing a prosecution witness in an unrelated case in Falls City Court earlier this month.
The revelation came as a Niagara County Court jury of seven men and five women sat waiting for opening statements in the trial of Matthew Glass to begin. County Court Judge John Ottaviano gave the jury preliminary instructions but then sent the members home for the day to allow him time to decide if the trial could still go forward with Glass represented by Assistant Niagara County Public Defenders Theodore Janese and Alexander Basinski.
The controversy over the Public Defenders Office’s actions played out throughout the morning and into the afternoon with the members of the jury outside of the courtroom. Ottaviano shuttled in and out of his chambers, conducting legal research on the conflict issue.
At one point the judge summoned both Janese and Basinski, along with First Assistant District Attorney Doreen Hoffmann and Assistant DA Mattie Davis, into his chambers to discuss the potential conflict. Despite closed doors, the angry yelling of one of the attorneys in the case could be heard inside the courtroom.
When Ottaviano returned to the bench, he told the lawyers, “This case is important. This decision is important. So I don’t want to rush it.”
The judge directed the prosecutors and defense attorneys to file additional legal briefs addressing whether the actions by the Public Defenders Office “created an actual conflict or a potential conflict” in the case and to argue whether he should declare a mistrial.
“I have not made any decision on whether to do so,” Ottaviano said.
The judge also demanded that Janese and Basinski cease any communication about the case with members of the Public Defenders Office in Niagara Falls.
Throughout the proceedings, Glass, 24, of Atlanta, sat quietly taking notes in a composition notebook. He faces charges of second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and third-degree tampering with a witness as a result of his indictment by a Niagara County grand jury in connection with the shooting death of a Falls man on Pine Avenue in October 2023.
Glass has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Ottaviano has ordered Glass held without bail pending his court proceedings.
The grand jury indictment accuses Glass of the shooting death of Robert Miller, 47, of the Falls, as he sat in a pickup truck on Pine Avenue on Oct. 2, 2023. Falls Police patrol officers found Miller in the front seat of his truck just before 11 p.m., near the corner of Pine Avenue and 17th Street.
Police had been called to the area for a request to “check on the welfare of a man in a pickup truck.” A caller to 911 told dispatchers that the man in the truck “hadn’t moved for over an hour.”
Officers said when they arrived, they found Miller in the driver’s seat of the truck, “unresponsive.” As Falls firefighters and EMTs worked to administer first aid, they discovered that Miller had been shot in his side.
Miller was pronounced dead at the scene.
Earlier in the evening, about 45 minutes before Miller’s body was discovered, patrol officers had investigated a 911 call from a person described as “a woman from Canada”, who was “unfamiliar” with the area she was driving in. The woman told police dispatchers that she saw a male wearing a black hoodie shooting at a parked vehicle, on Pine Avenue “between McDonald’s and Hyde Park Boulevard.”
The woman told dispatchers that she kept driving after potentially witnessing Miller’s murder. Patrol officers responded to the area then, but said they found nothing suspicious at that time.
Investigators have declined to comment on what Glass may have been doing in the Falls. Law enforcement sources said Glass has been the subject of investigations and arrest warrants from law enforcement agencies across the United States from Minnesota to Tennessee to his home state of Georgia.
Glass was arrested by Falls Police patrol officers who spotted him in a convenience store in the 2300 block of Pine Avenue on Oct. 12, 2023. He was taken into custody on an unrelated weapons charge.
Criminal Investigation Division (CID) detectives would not say what led them to Glass as a suspect in the case. The day after the murder, Falls Police Crime Scene Unit (CSU) and CID detectives scoured the 1700 block of Pine Avenue in a search for security or surveillance cameras that may have captured the shooting on video.
Investigators have not said if they recovered video of the crime.