Legal defense groups push for more reform

ALBANY — The city’s top legal defense organizations want state lawmakers and Gov. Cuomo to keep criminal justice reforms at the top of their to-do list as they prepare for next year’s legislative session.

The Legal Aid Society, New York County Defender Services, Brooklyn Defender Services, Bronx Defenders and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem issued a joint letter Monday calling on Gov. Cuomo and legislative leaders to legalize marijuana and build on sweeping changes enacted earlier this year — including controversial pretrial, bail and evidence reforms.

“With the 2020 session only weeks away, we respectfully ask New York State to continue this progress and prioritize and pass critical and urgent reforms to other aspects of the system, including policing, due process, prison and jail conditions and parole,” the organizations write.

Democrats, under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (below, left) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (below, right), passed and enacted broad reforms in the budget earlier this year including the elimination of cash bail for most low-level crimes and the expansion of open discovery, which requires prosecutors to share material intended to be used at trial early.

The overhauls have drawn fierce criticism from Republicans, prosecutors and law enforcement officials, who say they haven’t had enough time or additional resources to prepare for the new laws.

The legal aid groups dismissed the concerns and said they’re doing all they can to ensure a smooth implementation process.

“While some prosecutors across the state are using taxpayer resources to mislead and spread baseless fear — and even to promote tactics to subvert the new laws — we are working to support local and statewide efforts to prepare for these changes, overwhelmingly supported by New Yorkers,” they write.

Some of the additional measures they want to see passed next year would transform the state’s courts and jails, bring an end to mass incarceration and amend current laws that have a disproportionate impact on minority New Yorkers.

The advocates are pushing for measures that would legalize marijuana, outlaw the use of deceptive interview tactics to induce confessions, provide counsel to young people being interrogated and make compensation available to the wrongfully convicted.

Also on the wish list is the Safer NY Acts, a collection of bills that would foster transparency and accountability for police departments across the state.

The organizations also support a measure proposed earlier this year by Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) that would make inmates over 55 who have served at least 15 years of their sentence eligible for parole.

Other bills include legislation repealing a law against loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. The statute as written is often used to profile predominately women of color, including transgender women, “for simply existing in public,” according to the advocates.

Separate pieces would also limit solitary confinement to 15 days, overhaul the parole system, fully restore voting rights for people in prison and on parole, expand automatic expungement for low-level offenses and end the lifetime jury duty ban for people convicted of felonies.