Baird Attorney Seeks New Trial in New York Training Death

UTICA -- Alan G. Baird III's battle against his criminally negligent homicide conviction has not ended.

The former Lairdsville assistant fire chief, convicted in connection with the 2001 fire-training death of Bradley Golden, was ordered in Oneida County Court to return to jail Monday to serve the remaining 35 days of his sentence.

But before he was ushered away from Judge Michael L. Dwyer's courtroom in handcuffs, Baird's attorney, Robert P. Moran Jr., filed a claim requesting a new trial on his client's behalf. The claim said the court failed to provide Baird with vital information from an Office of Fire Prevention report that may have helped his defense.

Baird was sentenced to serve 75 days in prison but later was released pending an appeal of his conviction to the state's Fourth Department Appellate Court in Rochester. His appeal was denied Dec. 31.

A copy of the report, written by Michael Miles of the fire prevention office, was provided to the Observer-Dispatch by Moran.

Miles' report begins by providing the details leading to Golden's death.

While the fire trainee was in the upstairs of a Route 5 barn preparing to serve as a victim in the "live-burn" exercise, Baird set a mattress on fire inside the barn, the report said.

The blaze went out of control, the report said, and Golden was killed.

The part Moran said was left out during the trial, however, is included within a timeline of events at the end of the report.

Miles said in the report that Oneida County Sheriff's Department investigators left "the scene unsecured sometime in the middle of the night."