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In the Bronx, justice is delayed & denied

Our Executive Director, Robin Steinberg, published the following piece in Daily News about our lawsuit challenging systemic court delay in the Bronx. “This situation constitutes nothing short of a constitutional crisis. People in the poorest borough in New York, with the highest percentage of black and Latino residents, are being forced to choose between returning to…

No One in NYC Should Be Forced to Make These Choices

Karume James, a staff attorney in our Criminal Defense Practice, published the following piece in The Huffington Post about the need for reduced fare MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers and the impact such a program would have on our clients. “Among the many “broken windows” cases we get at The Bronx Defenders, I’ve always found arrests for…

Forfeiture on the Frontlines Campaign

  The NYPD makes tens of thousands of arrests every year, the vast majority of them for low-level misdemeanors. Property is seized in nearly every one of those arrests, including cash, cellphones, IDs, keys, cars, and even prescription medicine. The South Bronx is one of the poorest and most over-policed congressional districts in the country,…

New York Times Editorial: A Nightmare Court, Worthy of Dickens

The New York Times Editorial Board weighs in on Trowbridge et al., v. Cuomo et al, our federal lawsuit challenging the epidemic of court delays in the Bronx Criminal Court. “This Dickensian nightmare is all too common in the Bronx, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Federal District Court by the Bronx Defenders,…

New York Times: Chronic Bronx Court Delays Deny Defendants Due Process, Suit Says

“Court delays in the Bronx — so troublesome that state officials had to create special courts to clear a backlog of felony cases — remain unresolved and have “fatally undermined the right to trial” for tens of thousands of people charged each year with low-level offenses, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.” Read the article…

BxD’s Annie Pineda to speak at 2016 Equal Justice Conference

On May 12, 2016, Annie Pineda, Director of Pro Bono at The Bronx Defenders, will speak at the 2016 Equal Justice Conference in a panel entitled “Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All about You: What Legal Services Organizations and Law Firms Should Know about Working Together.” From the organizers: “This session will offer insider…

Groundbreaking Federal Lawsuit Challenges Epidemic of Delay in Bronx Criminal Court

Contact: media@bronxdefenders.org Broken System Undermines Right to Speedy Trial and Due Process for Thousands of People Charged with Low-Level Offenses, Causing Significant Social and Economic Hardships NEW YORK (May 10, 2016)  – A federal class action lawsuit was filed today against Governor Andrew Cuomo and the administrators of New York State’s Unified Court System for…

The Defenders

Longreads profiles The Bronx Defenders. “The quality of the lawyering among public defenders in New York City is universally understood to be very high; that wasn’t Robin Steinberg’s concern. She saw inadequacy built into the very structure of public defense. In the nineties, she noticed that more of the clients she was defending were being…

Let Them Work

Emily Galvin, an attorney in our Criminal Defense Practice, published the following piece in Slate about the need to rethink prison employment.  Most people are at least intuitively aware of the connection between poverty and prison. As Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, has said, too often the opposite of poverty…

BxD Social Workers and Advocates to present at the 2016 NOFSW Conference

Social workers and civil legal advocates from The Bronx Defenders will present the following two workshops at the 2016 National Organization of Forensic Social Work (NOFSW) Conference in New Orleans, LA, on June 17-19, 2016. Saturday, June 18 (3:15-4:45) Developing Written Advocacy Skills: Persuasion and Disruption This workshop will provide instruction on how to develop…

NYPD: Stop Evicting Families

Christa Douaihy, supervising attorney in our Civil Action Practice, published the following piece in The Huffington Post about the NYPD’s use of obscure laws to facilitate the eviction of families from their homes without basic fairness or due process.  The Movement for Black Lives has, among many things, created a renewed sense of urgency for policy makers to address our…

The Intercept: Terrorist Watchlist Errors Spread to Criminal Rap Sheets

Last February, attorney Anisha Gupta represented a Latino man charged with two misdemeanors: trespassing and resisting arrest. At her client’s arraignment, the first appearance before a judge where a bail determination is made, Gupta thought her client would be quickly let out on his own recognizance — meaning a release without posting bail; the prosecution…

VICE: There’s a New Way for People Arrested in NYC to Avoid Jail

A 22-year-old black man stands with his hands clasped behind his back as the prosecution reads charges to the judge. Low-level assault, a class D felony. Recommended bail? $75,000. It’s 6:45 PM on a Saturday evening at Brooklyn Criminal Court, and the audience is comprised mostly of family members—some of whom will wait until one…

Council Presses de Blasio Administration to Reduce Delays in Criminal Court

When Chidinma Ume, an assistant counsel in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, visited Queens recently, district attorney staff showed her around the courthouse, taking care to point out unused areas. “We gave her a tour of the courthouse, and how many locked doors that we have in courtrooms because we have…

New York Law Journal: We Need Speedy Trial Reform in City’s Criminal Courts

Too often in New York City, the maxim “justice delayed is justice denied” is no mere abstraction, but a reality that wears down defendants, dispirits victims and cheats taxpayers. This is particularly true in the city’s criminal court, where lower-level cases—misdemeanors and petty offenses—are adjudicated and where the gaze of policymakers and the press rarely…

Vice: We Know Terrifyingly Little About How Cops in New York Track Cell Phones

For the past several years, police departments across America have been using a nifty new piece of technology to trace the location of suspects. IMSI-catchers—commonly known as “StingRays” after the most popular brand name—are small boxes that gather all cell signals in a given area by mimicking a cell phone tower. And they’ve grown increasingly…

Yes Magazine: When You Can’t Afford the Cost of Clearing Your Record

Adrienne broke the law: Caught speeding on her way home from work in Memphis, Tennessee, she pled guilty to charges of reckless driving and reckless endangerment. Two years later, Adrienne had completed probation and paid her court fees. But the charges still appeared on background checks, so she could find only temporary work. The barrier…

Independent Record: Flathead Reservation program helps former inmates reintegrate

A new program on the Flathead Reservation is helping people who are released from tribal jail or the state prison adjust to life after incarceration. There are many “collateral consequences” people deal with upon their release — inability to find a place to live, struggling to get a job and issues getting drivers licenses reinstated,…

The New Yorker: Sonia from the Bronx

Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, says that she prefers to be called Sonia from the Bronx. Chances are nobody who meets her ever dreams of calling her anything so informal. When she came back to her native borough last week for an Evening of Conversation at the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit…

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor Speaks at The Bronx Defenders

On Monday, January 25th, The Bronx Defenders hosted U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor for an evening of conversation at its justice campus in the South Bronx. Local community members, staff members and supporters of The Bronx Defenders were present. The conversation between Robin Steinberg, Executive Director of The Bronx Defenders, and Justice Sotomayor…

Gotham Gazette: ‘Dangerousness’ Aspect of Cuomo’s Bail Plan Troubles Reformers

In his recently-released policy agenda for 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo included a plan to reform the state’s bail system. While it has not been fully fleshed out yet, Cuomo’s proposal dictates that judges would use a scientific assessment tool to determine an individual’s “risk to public safety” while setting bail, a proposal similar to one…