The young man had a key to unlock the suburban Nassau County home. That much was clear to the private investigator watching outside.

The key soon unlocked something else: a secret. It was exactly the kind of evidence the investigator’s client, Shannon Hynes, was looking for.

Hynes felt something was amiss in Queens Surrogate’s Court, where she was locked in an inheritance dispute with her brother. The judge overseeing her case kept taking actions that Shannon — a seasoned trial lawyer by trade — considered unusual. So she hired the investigator, who that day discovered the “smoking gun.”

The young man with the key was Zachary Zayas, principal law clerk to Judge Peter Kelly — the same judge overseeing Shannon’s case. And the key opened a house owned by Cheryl Katz — the attorney representing Shannon’s brother in the inheritance dispute.

Katz and Zayas were dating and living together. Neither the judge, nor the law clerk, nor the attorney disclosed this to Shannon.

Adding another layer of intrigue: the law clerk’s last name.

Joseph Zayas, Zachary’s father, is the state court system’s chief administrative judge — the highest-ranking administrative position within the sprawling state judiciary. He runs the daily operations of the state Office of Court Administration (OCA), overseeing a $3.7 billion annual budget, 3,300 judges, and 15,000 non-judicial employees. If Zachary were to be investigated for not disclosing his relationship, it would likely be by a court official appointed by his dad.

This was a clear violation of ethics rules governing state attorneys and judges, according to Cynthia Godsoe, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who specializes in both family law and professional ethics.

“There absolutely should have been disclosure by Katz and the judge,” Godsoe said. “It couldn’t be clearer. I’m just sort of astonished.”

A New York City district attorney gave inaccurate testimony about one of the state’s most contentious political issues during a February legislative hearing, according to court documents recently reviewed by New York Focus.

Bronx DA Darcel Clark was testifying about discovery law, which governs the process by which prosecutors and defense attorneys share evidence with each other ahead of criminal trials. Governor Kathy Hochul proposed changes to the law in January that would water down some aspects of New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms.

Clark and other district attorneys have supported Hochul’s proposal, claiming that since the reforms, judges have been throwing out strong criminal cases and overturning convictions on minor technicalities.

A program New Yorkers have long relied on to keep their homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer could be on the chopping block, putting vulnerable households at increased risk for severe illness or death amid soaring utility costs.

The national Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) faces an uncertain future following drastic cutbacks announced last week by the Trump administration. The program’s entire federal staff was laid off last week as part of a massive restructuring at the Department of Health and Human Services, leaving the status of pending and future funding unclear.

“How could there be any program moving forward?” asked Laurie Wheelock of the Public Utility Law Project of New York, a nonprofit that advocates for energy affordability across the state. “That’s really worrisome.”

New York lawmakers are considering weakening the state Education Department's recent guidelines on yeshivas and other nonpublic schools, New York Focus has learned.

These schools face a looming deadline – June 30 – to prove they offer a “substantially equivalent” education as the state’s public schools, under regulations issued in 2022. A draft bill circulating the legislature would loosen those rules and potentially delay the deadline for some schools.

Critics have argued for years that yeshivas, which may prioritize the teaching of religious Jewish texts over subjects like English, math and science, have deprived students, mostly boys, of equal access to education. Some Ultra-Orthodox community leaders have fiercely opposed efforts to regulate how they teach, advocating to retain autonomy over their schools.

The draft text of the bill, submitted by the Assembly, does not identify a sponsor. Its appearance in the final stretch of budget negotiations signals that its backers are seeking to have it inserted directly into a budget bill, rather than have it considered as part of the normal legislative process.