Prior to his election to the assembly, Kirwan served for 28 years with the New York State Police, retiring with the position of lieutenant in the Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
[4] The results of the election took over one hundred days to certify, and when completed on February 16, 2011, was the last legislative race in the United States to be decided.
[6] Kirwan had a reputation as a "reformer" after a 2007 lawsuit where he and Democratic State Senator Liz Krueger joined together to sue Silver, former Governor of New York George Pataki and then Senate Leader Joe Bruno over the infamous legislative dysfunction at the New York State Capitol in Albany, citing disenfranchisement of minority party members of both houses.
[8] Although the plaintiffs were initially successful, because Kirwan lost his seat in 2008, appeals on the suit were never decided by the courts, and the New York State Legislature is still widely criticized by good government groups such as New York University's Brennan Center for Justice as "the most dysfunctional legislature in the United States of America".
[9] Kirwan, who had experienced heart trouble for several years, died of kidney failure on November 28, 2011, aged 78, at the Newburgh campus of St. Luke's-Cornwall Hospital.