Apparently, the New York state Legislature isn’t completed with its persistent marketing campaign to disrespect and injury the rights of crime victims whereas concurrently making it infinitely harder to carry convicted criminals accountable for their actions.
Its newest invoice, inaccurately named the “Wrongful Conviction Act,” could possibly be the worst of all.
The WCA is a swiftly drafted, last-minute piece of laws that was simply handed — at a time when lawmakers hope nobody was paying consideration.
Th act will eviscerate any hope of getting finality in our criminal-justice system and can end in infinite appeals in the identical instances and extra criminals launched onto our streets
It’s assured to create extra crime victims. Simply what we want!
I name on Gov. Kathy Hochul to train her veto energy and cease the invoice from changing into regulation to forestall deadly hurt to our criminal-justice system.
The act is packaged as a mechanism to forestall wrongful conviction — a wonderfully effective purpose of permitting “harmless” folks to problem previous convictions.
But New York already leads the nation in post-conviction reduction and supplies quite a few pathways for defendants to problem their convictions.
Aside from the traditional enchantment course of, post-conviction reduction is already out there for newly found proof, exoneration by way of DNA, coerced or misunderstood responsible pleas, prosecutorial or police misconduct, ineffective help of counsel, retroactive modifications within the regulation and failure to warn of immigration penalties.
Beneath this invoice, defendants could be allowed infinite meritless challenges to felony convictions.
If their movement will get denied, they will file it time and again, as typically as they like.
They’ll wait many years after which file the similar movement once more.
Maybe most alarming, if a defendant succeeds on a problem to their conviction, below present regulation they get a brand new trial.
But below this misguided laws, they stroll free and might by no means be tried once more for that crime.
That is true even the place the error is because of an ineffective protection lawyer, one thing that the trial decide and prosecutor can’t forestall.
Beneath this invoice, murderers shall be incentivized to rent the worst lawyer they will discover, get convicted and have the case thrown out with out a risk of a retrial.
The invoice can be poorly drafted, permitting trial-level courts to assessment selections made by appellate courts and never even requiring defendant to swear that their claims are true.
It’s additionally a discovery nightmare requiring prosecutors to supply discovery and maintain onto proof in perpetuity to reply to motions on decades-old instances as a result of the invoice permits courts to vacate a judgment if proof is now not out there.
Had been you against the law sufferer or witness a very long time in the past?
Have you ever put the ache and nervousness of that horrible expertise behind you?
Robust.
You’re about to be referred to as again in for these motions.
And if you find yourself, it most likely won’t be for the final time.
No conviction will ever be remaining.
No case will ever be “over” and an infinite stream of responsible defendants shall be exonerated on a myriad of seemingly never-ending technicalities created by our out-of-control Legislature.
These are only a few examples from one more horrendous piece of “felony justice” laws that might have swift, extreme, and painful penalties for law-abiding residents of New York.
It’s an pointless “repair” for a system that isn’t damaged.
By eliminating finality in convictions, the invoice undermines the rights of victims, burdening them with everlasting nervousness and hopelessness.
Our Legislature has forgotten the victims of crime.
Prosecutors throughout the state have borne the burden of trying to take care of public security whereas working in a system more and more rigged to subvert justice.
This invoice goes too far, as it’s going to trigger an instantaneous explosion of meritless appeals, which can deplete regulation enforcement sources, already stretched to the breaking level.
Once more, I ask the governor to recollect these victims.
Please Gov. Hochul, train your veto energy to forestall this atrocious invoice from changing into an unconscionable regulation.
The integrity of our criminal-justice system is at stake.
Ray Tierney is the district lawyer of Suffolk County. He has been a prosecutor for over 30 years.
