Kenneth C. Crowe II is reporting for the Times Union New York's highest court has declined to hear an appeal of a lower court's unanimous decision to reinstate criminal charges against former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove. That means Abelove will likely go on trial this fall over his handling of a police shooting in April 2016. The Appellate Division judges reinstated the charges in November 2019, alleging that Abelove lied to a grand jury about the April 2016 fatal police shooting of unarmed DWI suspect Edson Thevenin in Troy. The Appellate Division decided that state Supreme Court Justice Jonathan D. Nichols of Columbia County wrongly ruled in 2018 the AG's office lacked the authority to prosecute Abelove for perjury and "erred in granting defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment." The AG's office then appealed Nichols' decision to the Appellate Division. In its decision, the court reinstated Abelove’s indictment for a single count of first-degree perjury, a felony that carries up to seven years in prison, and two counts of official misconduct, a misdemeanor. The criminal charges against Abelove came out of an April 2016, incident in which Troy police Sgt. Randall French fatally shot Thevenin during a DWI stop. French died in April after contracting COVID-19. Abelove, a Republican, failed to get re-elected in 2018, losing to Democrat Mary Pat Donnelly. Read the full story in the Times Union.