In a troubling study conducted by the Department of Justice, it was found that 1 out of every 10 state prisoners are sexually abused – or 9.6% of the entire state jail population. What makes the sexual abuse even worse is that a great majority of the incidents involved physical restraint. As a re...
In the latest round of the battle against Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD and their stop and frisk policy, a federal judge granted class-action status to several thousand New York citizens who claim that they were illegally stopped and/or frisked. This decision comes on the heels of a report by the ...
The City of New York has recently agreed to train its police officers to end the policy of stopping and frisking livery cab passengers. The civil suit was started by two men who were detained after their livery cab was stopped as a result of the Taxi and Livery Inspection Program (TRIP). Once the...
Recently, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NCLU) analyzed the NYPD's 2011 computerized data base for information regarding stops, frisks, reasons for stop and recovery of weapons. What the report found was troubling. In 2011, the NYPD stop and questioned people 685,724 times. Out of those stop...
In an unusual federal criminal decision, a federal judge from the Eastern District of New York granted a defendant's Habeas Corpus petition on the grounds that the state court trial judge acted vindictively in rendering sentence. In the matter of Izaguirre v. Lee, Federal Judge Joseph Bianco fou...
The New York Court of Appeals drew a distinction between incidental viewing of child pornography and the active possession or procurement of the images. In the case of People of the State of New York v. James Kent , a College professor was convicted of 143 counts of possession and procurement of ...
A former NYPD officer was sentenced to 75 years to life for raping a woman in the inwood section of New York. The case made headlines due to the jury's decision to acquit the NYPD officer of the most serious offense of Rape in the First Degree and instead convict on the lesser charge of Sexual As...
This week, an article in the Village Voice written by Nick Pinto uncovered some very important issues about the bail process inNew York criminal cases. Statistically, Mr. Pinto wrote that in 2010, only 17 % of those held on $1,000 or less made bail at arraignment – which is the first court appear...
In yet another case where a prosecutor sat on exculpatory evidence, Darrell Dula spent 10 months behind bars when a Brooklyn DA failed to turn over evidence that an alleged sex trafficking victim recanted her accusation. Here, an orthodox woman from crown heights accused four black males of Rape ...
A decision last month by Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York underscores the importance of the government's Brady obligation and exposes their efforts to avoid it. In the case of USA v. Rajat Gupta , a criminal insider trading allegation, the United States Attorney's Office (US...
The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 vote, just ruled that officials may conduct strip searches on anyone arrested for any offense before being jailed; this, even without suspicion of contraband. Consider being strip-searched for speeding. This is exactly what happened to the plaintiffs in Florence ...
The New York Civil Liberties Union has recently analyzed NYPD's stop and frisk program - boiling down the department's 2011 684,000 stops to the top ten precincts where the policy is used the most. The goal of this report is to make policy and action transparent so the citizens of New York will h...
The recent verdict convicting Dharun Ravi - a Rutgers student who had sent out Twitter and text messages encouraging others to watch his roommate, Tyler Clementi, engaged in intimate, sexual activity with another male student - for bias and invasion of privacy crimes at Rutgers University have wi...
The NYPD arrested sixteen suspects Tuesday on charges of setting up fake auto accidents in Brooklyn, netting $400,000 in insurance payouts, authorities said. Several of the incidents involved U-Haul trucks rented by people with squeaky-clean licenses, said the NYPD's Fraudulent Accident Investiga...
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have asked a judge to impose a 23-year prison sentence on Christopher M. Coke. A man, who has been described as one of the most powerful and brutal drug lords in Jamaica and whose arrest in 2010 came after a month-long manhunt that left more than 70 people dead. M...
On Wednesday, George Huguely, a former University of Virginia lacrosse player, was found guilty of second-degree murder in the killing of his ex-girlfriend. Mr. Huguely, 24, faces 5 to 40 years in prison in the beating death of Yeardley Love, 22. Prosecutors said he killed her in a drunken, jealo...
A Queens computer teacher has been arrested for sexually abusing two elementary school students, authorities said. Wilbert Cortez, 49, allegedly touched the genitals and the buttocks of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old over their clothes in his classroom at Public School 174 in Rego Park on at leas...
A leader of the violent Folk Nation gang was captured Wednesday morning hiding in his girlfriend's Brooklyn apartment, authorities said. The gang leader, Devon Rodney, is being charged in a racketeering indictment for ordering gang members to kill rivals and conspiring to rob jewelry stores in Ma...
A teacher's aide at P.S. 87, a highly regarded Manhattan public elementary school, was arrested after he allegedly sexually abused a student. The accused, Gregory Atkins, 56, was working at the Upper West Side public school since November 2008 and has been a part of the school system since 2001. ...
A Brooklyn elementary school teacher's aide was out on bail after being arrested in January, on charges of possessing child pornography. The teacher's aide, Taleek Brooks, 40, was then arrested again after federal agent's uncovered videos from his computer of him engaging in sexual acts with stud...
The state's chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, said that instituting new safeguards against wrongful convictions and raising the age at which criminal defendants are considered adults should be top priorities of legislators and the legal community in New York State, reported the New York Times. Judge...
Federal prosecutors have charged Ronald Herron with three brutal murders including one that the wannabe rapper boasted about on his twitter account. A Brooklyn Federal court grand jury indicted Herron on Monday for the murders which authorities say are connected to his drug enterprise in the Gowa...
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/12/07/low-level-marijuana-arrests-down-after-nypd-puts-new-policy-in-place/ It is important to note that the NYPD has set out to take a different approach on marijuana possession – a very common charge that led to a summons or a DAT. Now, the NYPD commissioner, R...
Recently, the US Supreme Court, in U.S. v. Jones , decided a case which underscored the developing need to reconcile innovative, technological investigatory techniques and our right to be free from “unreasonable” searches and seizures. In Jones,two men were convicted of a conspiracy to possess an...
A former state senator, Nicholas A. Spano, is set to plead guilty today to a federal tax charge for failing to report more than $45,000 in income from 2000 to 2008. Mr. Spano is a moderate Republican who was both influential and well liked in the legislature. During his lengthy tenure in office t...
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