New York Criminal Defense Blog

New York City diligently tracks the number of “stop and frisks” its officers do on a daily basis. So far this year, these stops are up more than 18% from this time last year according to the New York Times. Interestingly but not surprisingly these stops were done on a disproportionate number of minorities, causing some eyebrow raising from civil liberties groups.

A “stop and frisk” is when an officer stops, perhaps questions, and pats down, or searches someone on the street. These are done as a preventative measure under many different circumstances. Some people feel that these stops are overused and abused while others believe them to be completely effective in controlling and preventing criminal activity. [Read More...]

People are often accused of crimes they didn’t commit. Less often they are convicted of these crimes. Although it isn’t a frequent occurrence, wrongful convictions should be guarded against at every turn. When our justice system works like it is supposed to, innocent people go free and guilty people are convicted.

New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman is looking to create a task force designed to specifically look at wrongful convictions, why they happen, and what can be done to prevent them. Unlike programs like the Innocence Project, this task force won’t look at cases that may be wrongful convictions but will only work with cases where the defendants have been exonerated.

As this article in the New York Times points out, the task force won’t only be looking at capital cases either. The group will look at all wrongful convictions in hopes to get a good, well-balanced idea about why they happen. This kind of information will be useful, not only to the New York criminal justice system, but to justice systems across the country. [Read More...]