TROY – A Rensselaer County court judge tossed one of former District Attorney Joel E. Abelove’s final indictments on Wednesday, dismissing the case against a former city police officer because prosecutors failed to obtain an indictment in time to comply with state speedy trial rules.

Judge Jennifer Sober's decision ended the misdemeanor assault and harassment charges filed against Dominick Comitale for allegedly hitting another man in September at a North Greenbush Little League field.

Comitale's attorney, William Roberts, convinced the judge to throw out the indictment — opened when Comitale was arraigned in County Court on Christmas Eve — because Abelove's office did not have the grand jury take action within a 90-day limit.

“More than 90 days had elapsed since the first court appearance,” Roberts said Wednesday after court.

Roberts said the new district attorney, Mary Pat Donnelly, consented to the dismissal of the charges.

“Mr. Comitale is relieved that the new administration in the DA’s office could see this issue for what it was,” Roberts said.

During last year's campaign, Donnelly focused her campaign on complaints that Abelove's office did not handle cases properly, often seeing charges dismissed or cases pleaded down to lesser charges because prosecutors failed to meet deadlines.

Donnelly said the speedy trial deadline for Comitale's case expired in October, two months before the indictment was opened. Under the law, the district attorney said, the case had to be dismissed.

"The previous administration's decision to upgrade the charges and to indict Dominick Comitale in December, after the speedy trial time had lapsed, does not circumvent this requirement. There has been an unfortunate and well-publicized pattern of speedy trial dismissals coming out of the DA's office over the past several years," Donnelly said in a statement.

Abelove could not be reached for comment Wednesday about the Comitale case.

A Times Union review covering a 15-month period from Jan. 1, 2016 through March 31, 2017 revealed that at least 400 cases handled by Abelove were never presented to a county grand jury. The cases were sent back down to the county's town and city courts where 38 percent of them were dismissed for failure to meet the speedy trial deadlines mandated by law.

Donnelly said her goal is to make sure speedy trial dismissals don't continue to occur as they did during Abelove's tenure.

At Comitale’s Dec. 24 arraignment, Roberts called Abelove’s decision to indict Comitale “an abuse of power.” Roberts said his client was never invited to testify before the grand jury.

"This was a witch hunt from the beginning and I will echo what Dominick's lawyer has said previously, that this indictment was nothing more than an abuse of power by Mr. Abelove," said Officer Nick Laviano, president of the Troy Police Benevolent Association.

"It's also sad that the city of Troy jumped the gun when they scheduled a termination hearing for Dominick and gave him no other choice but to resign," Laviano said.

The indictment arose from a Sept. 8 dispute where Comitale, who was off-duty at the time, allegedly elbowed Twin Town Little League vice president Darren Ayotte and pressed his police badge into Ayotte's forehead after pushing him against a car. Comitale was initially charged with second-degree harassment.

That charge is a violation, the lowest offense in the criminal code. The grand jury indictment, opened weeks after the 90-day window expired, bumped it up to a misdemeanor.

According to witnesses, Comitale became involved in an argument between Ayotte and a Little League manager over cleaning up the field after a game. Ayotte is the director of personnel for the state Department of Correction and Community Supervision.

Comitale, who has faced a number of other complaints both on and off the job, resigned from the police force shortly after he was indicted and as he faced a dismissal hearing brought by the city.