How We Judge Prosecutors

Advocates in Albany this past weekend said they hope 2018 is the year criminal prosecutors around the state get a government oversight board like the boards that monitor police officers and judges.

“New York wins the silver medal for wrongful convictions,” said Bill Bastuk, founder of “It Could Happen to You,” a watchdog group. “We have more wrongful convictions — over 250 — than any other state besides Texas.”

Bastuk and others at the annual conference of the New York Association for Black and Puerto Rican Legislators are calling for a government body that would process allegations against prosecutors and sanction them for withholding evidence and other misdeeds. They envision an apparatus roughly similar to the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct, which handles complaints about judges, or civilian review boards, which do the same thing for some local police departments.

The proposal has united minority lawmakers from the city with John DeFrancisco – the Senate’s powerful Republican Deputy Majority Leader and leading GOP candidate for governor this fall. The Senate bill and Assembly bill never got out of committee last year, but supporters believe it could join other criminal justice reforms that seem to be gaining momentum in the current session.

Many district attorneys oppose the proposal, saying there are already state grievance committees that handle complaints against all attorneys, including prosecutors.

“There’s a system in place,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark. “Granted, it may need some reform or some revision, but there’s already a place for that.”

The state district attorneys association has also expressed concern that defense attorneys could use a prosecutor misconduct commission to slow down proceedings by filing frivolous allegations.

Other reform priorities include a proposal to overhaul the pre-trial bail and detention system, and a proposal to better enforce the constitutional right to a speedy trial.  Both items are considered key components of the plan to close Rikers Island, because they would reduce the number of inmates to a size that could be dispersed to smaller, community-based jails.