Five Borough Defense

Ladies and gentlement - the Introduction:

People litigating a civil claim in New York State, such as a debt or a contract dispute, have the opportunity through discovery to learn almost everything about the other side’s case. So, too, do criminal defendants in many other states, since their criminal discovery rules allow broad, early, and automatic access to the prosecution’s evidence. But under New York’s antiquated criminal discovery statute, defendants are denied vitally important information, essential to make rational decisions about their pending cases. The limited information they receive is also turned over so late that it is often impossible to intelligently investigate, to secure and use any potentially exculpatory evidence, to fairly weigh a guilty plea offer, or to develop a trial strategy.

Overhaul of New York’s criminal discovery rules will accomplish two key things: it will help innocent or over-charged defendants fairly prepare for trial, and it will encourage guilty defendants to plead guilty without needless and costly delays.

God Bless the Legal Aid Society.
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Drug courts, a forum designed to give addicted offenders a second chance, are under attack in Maryland — and not by prosecutors.

The state’s public defender says Maryland’s drug courts give judges too much power and defendants too little protection, and yesterday she argued to the state’s high court that the tribunals are not constitutional.

Upon viewing the video footage taken of police arresting New School University students on Friday, April 10th, the Commissioner of the NYPD sent the following email to all the NYPD patrol officers and detectives. An anonymous source provided The Five Borough Defense Blog with a copy of this stirring email, and we post an excerpt below. Commissioner Kelly is referring to this article and this video.

I am deeply disappointed in the actions of the officers seen in the video. However, the words of our former spokesman Paul Browne trouble me even more. In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Browne made several statements that were blatantly contradicted by videotape. Despite Mr. Brownes denial that pepper spray or mace were used in effectuating the arrests, the video shows officers spraying the students. Mr. Browne went on totell the New York Times that the students locked themselves in the building and therefore it was their own fault if they couldnt leave. Again, the video contradicts him, by showing students opening a door and sticking their heads outside, while police officers push the door shut, preventing the students from leaving.

The NYPD will not tolerate lying to the public.

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NYT
April 8, 2009

A woman in her 40s who was armed with a large kitchen knife was fatally shot by the police in her apartment in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, the authorities said.

The details remained sketchy, but a Police Department spokesman said the woman had lunged at one officer, cutting both his hands, which prompted two other officers to open fire. The officers fired as many as four shots, said the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, though he said the number of shots was preliminary and was still subject to investigation.

NY Times:

The number of criminal cases that court-appointed lawyers in New York City handle will be capped for the first time under a new law tucked in the $131 billion state budget bill passed last week. The measure addresses longstanding pleas from low-paid public defenders, who sometimes juggle more than 100 cases at a time.

Public defenders across the country have complained that large caseloads impede their ability to provide the best advocacy and damage their clients’ chances of getting a fair hearing in court.

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FINALLY sounds like people are getting pissed off about this.

NY Times article:

Here is a tale that sounds like it comes right from the pages of “Little Dorrit,” Charles Dickens’s scathing indictment of Victorian England’s debtors’ prisons. Unfortunately, it is happening in 21st-century America.

Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son. When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.

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DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF
Monday, March 23rd 2009, 8:44 PM

A Bronx narcotics detective was indicted Monday on charges she juiced the truth about a big pot bust - lies that got the case against the dealers tossed out.

Detective Debra Eager, a 15-year NYPD veteran, said on the stand that she and her partner saw two drug suspects toting boxes into a Holland Ave. apartment.

Eager, 41, said she followed the duo into the building, heard them enter an apartment and then made an arrest.

Her testimony, however, “was starkly contradicted by video surveillance” at the building, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said.

And even though the boxes contained 33 pounds of marijuana, the charges against the suspects were dismissed because Eager allegedly distorted the details of the bust.

She was indicted on three counts of first-degree perjury, each carrying up to seven years in prison. She was also suspended without pay.

Juvenile justice experts across the nation say that the approach, known as the Missouri Model, is one of several promising reform movements that strapped states are trying to reduce the costly confinement of youths. California, which spends more than $200,000 a year on each incarcerated juvenile, reallocated $93 million in prison expenses by reducing state confinement.

There is no barbed wire around facilities like Missouri Hills, on the outskirts of St. Louis. No more than 10 youths and 2 adults called facilitators live in cottage-style dormitories in a wooded setting, a far cry from the quasi penitentiaries in other states. When someone becomes unruly, the other youths are trained to talk him down. Perhaps most impressive, Missouri has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the country.

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State police have arrested a public defender in Bristol Superior Court after a dispute involving deportation of one of her clients.

Police say 53-year-old Elisa Villa tried to block immigration enforcement agents from arresting one of her clients for deportation Thursday.

As the Court wrote on page 13, “We conclude that because assistant public defenders serve at the pleasure of the public defender, the public defender has the sole statutory authority to make work assignments to the assistant public defenders. Thus, absent a finding of contempt or other specific cause, it is beyond the scope of judicial authority for an individual judge to reject an assistant public defender assigned to his courtroom, to refuse to allow an assistant public defender to represent defendants when she has been assigned to do so, or to remove an assistant public defender from representation of a defendant.”