NEW YORK — The New York City Police Department likely turned a blind eye to violations of the constitutional rights of thousands of individuals detained at private residential buildings in the Bronx in a stop-and-frisk program that’s under assault in the courts, a federal judge said Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said the department’s…
Despite a well-publicized police order instructing officers not to use bogus pretexts to justify marijuana arrests, New York City remains the pot-bust capital of the United States. Preliminary figures released in late November indicated a slight decline in arrests for misdemeanor possession of marijuana in the two months since Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told police…
To the Editor: What is hidden behind the heated philosophical debate that jury nullification generates are the real people and communities affected by prosecutorial and police policies. Paul Butler properly notes the disgraceful number of marijuana possession prosecutions in New York City. But what we need to be equally aware of is that drug prosecutions…
Marijuana arrests in New York City are still high, but slowing down slightly. Police officers made 13 percent fewer arrests for low-level marijuana possession in public view after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly issued an order forbidding officers to arrest people for marijuana found in people’s clothes. But the dip in marijuana arrests hasn’t stopped allegations…
The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project is the first institutionally-provided public defender program in the country for immigrants facing deportation.
Over the past year, the New York City Department of Corrections (NYCDOC) has quietly implemented a massive expansion in the number of solitary confinement units on Rikers Island. By the end of 2011, the number of “punitive segregation” cells at Rikers will have grown by 45 percent, from 681 to a total of 990 cells….
On October 29, McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of our Civil Action Practice, spoke about the civil consequences of conviction at the 2011 Symposium “Sentencing Law: Rhetoric & Reality” at University of Pennsylvania Law School. For more information: http://www.pennumbra.com/symposia/
Robin Steinberg spoke on a panel on Systemic Reform at the Innovations in Criminal Justice Summit in Chicago on Wednesday, September 28, 2011. For more information please click here.
On September 27, McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of our Civil Action Practice, trained more than 200 public defenders at the South Carolina Public Defender Association Annual Conference on how to use the Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky to get better results for clients. For more information: http://www.sccid.sc.gov/userfiles/PD-Conference-2011/2011-Agenda-Final—9-14-11.pdf
Robin Steinberg spoke at Increasing Public Confidence: A Roundtable on Community Justice held at the Center for Court Innovation’s office in NYC on August 10, 2011. For more information please click here.
A bill sponsored by Bronx state Senator Gustavo Rivera now headed to Governor Cuomo’s desk will allow charities to post bail for defendants charged with petty misdemeanors. Thousands of Bronxites do hard time at Rikers Island because they can’t afford to post bail. But new legislation headed to Gov. Cuomo’s desk could set them free….
The Bronx Defenders was awarded a grant from the Oversight Board for Judiciary Civil Legal Services Funds in New York. This 2011-2012 grant comes from the $12.5 million that the OCA is distributing to 56 civil legal service providers. For more information please read the New York Law Journal article.
Robin Steinberg spoke on a panel at The National Criminal Justice Association’s 2011 National Forum in Jersey City, NJ, on Tuesday, August 2, where The Bronx Defenders was showcased as an innovation in criminal justice. For more information please go to The National Criminal Justice Association website.
By McGregor Smyth. From the moment of arrest, people charged with crimes find themselves caught in a web of punitive sanctions, in danger of losing their jobs, homes, children, and right to live in this country. Politicians over the past thirty years, eager to be “tough on crime” at the expense of being smart on…
Robin Steinberg and McGregor Smyth spoke at the 2011 Community-Oriented Defender Conference on July 22 at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. Their session was titled Confronting the Leadership Challenge for Public Defenders Created by Padilla v. Kentucky. For more information, highlights and video clips, please click here.
At the American Bar Association 2011 Annual Meeting on August 4-9 in Toronto, Bronx Defenders Executive Director Robin Steinberg will accept the 2011 Hodson Award. The Hodson Award named in honor of the distinguished public service career of the late Major General Kenneth J. Hodson, a former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army, and…
Article published in the Howard Law Journal by McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of the Civil Action Practice and Director of Reentry Net, examines the practical effect of Padilla for criminal defense attorneys currently working with clients on pending cases. The article uses the legal reasoning of Padilla to outline a structure for approaching the daunting…
Join The Bronx Defenders’ Young Professionals Committee on Tuesday, June 21, from 7-9PM at The Wharf Bar & Grill in Manhattan for a discussion on the NYPD’s controversial Stop & Frisk policing strategy. At the Wharf, you will meet like-minded individuals, talk to Bronx Defenders staff about the real life implications of Stop & Frisk…
Robin Steinberg, Executive Director, McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of the Civil Action Practice, and Jennifer Friedman, Supervising Immigration Attorney in the Civil Action Practice, presented at the “Padilla and the Future of the Defense Function” conference at the Jacob Burns Ethics Center in the Practice of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law on June 20-21,…
Robin spoke at 2011 Conference on Clinical Legal Education that took place in Seattle, WA on June 13-17, 2011. For more information please click here.
Bronx, New York—May 16, 2011—The Center for Holistic Defense (“The Center”), a project of The Bronx Defenders, in collaboration with The Center for Court Innovation, is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of The Holistic Defense for Public Defender Offices Technical Assistance Project. 2011 Participants of The Holistic Defense Technical Assistance Project Harris County Courts—Texas…
Robin Steinberg spoke at WNYC’s Greene Space on a panel discussing Stop and Frisk. This panel, a part of The NEXT New York Conversation, discussed both sides of the controversial police strategy and how this procedure affects New Yorkers. “Even as violent crime rates in New York have dropped dramatically in the past 15 years,…
[This is the second part of a two-part series. Read the first part here.] Illegal searches are more common than people realize, but few end up getting challenged in court, law enforcement officials and defense attorneys say. Checks and balances within the criminal justice system are intended to ferret out improper arrests, but many defendants and…
Police arrest 140 people every day in New York City for possessing small amounts of marijuana. It’s now by far the most common misdemeanor charge in the city, and thousands of these arrests take place when police stop-and-frisk young men in the poorest neighborhoods. While police say these stop-and-frisks are a way to find guns,…
