Although New Yorker politicians consider themselves the national leader in civil rights, New York still ranks third in the nation for wrongful convictions — and New York City has the third-highest number of exonerations nationwide. Each case represents a life derailed: families broken, years stolen, careers destroyed, childhoods lived without a parent.
Behind many of these injustices is a familiar culprit: law-enforcement misconduct. Officers with long, documented histories of dishonesty or abuse — the same patterns uncovered by NYS AG Letitia James — remain on the job, cycling innocent people like me into the criminal-justice system. As reported in Black Westchester Magazine, I have been one of far too many New Yorkers where “official police misconduct was acknowledged, yet no mandatory case review followed. For defendants who are unjustly arrested, this lack of follow-through is not a technical oversight; it is a civil-rights failure.”
