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NEW: These two prosecutors resigned after a Queens judge found they wrongfully sent 3 Black men to prison for 20+ years.
Now a new group is going after their law licenses + those of 19 other current/former Queens prosecutors with histories of misconduct: https://gothamist.com/news/prosecutors-wrongfully-convicted-three-men-who-spent-24-years-behind-bars-will-they-be-disbarred
Now a new group is going after their law licenses + those of 19 other current/former Queens prosecutors with histories of misconduct: https://gothamist.com/news/prosecutors-wrongfully-convicted-three-men-who-spent-24-years-behind-bars-will-they-be-disbarred
2/ The two prosecutors in that case failed to turn over evidence pointing to credible alternative murder suspects + made numerous false statements to the court. They were subsequently promoted by the DA. Neither were ever disciplined by the courts. See this thread for more: https://twitter.com/georgejoseph94/status/1379050882633981953
3/ Because NY prosecutors have routinely failed to impose discipline internally (see our dive below), this group is filing complaints en masse to the court-appointed grievance committees which are tasked with investigating complaints about all attorneys: https://gothamist.com/news/top-queens-prosecutors-broke-rules-got-promoted
4/ It’s a new strategy. Historically, defense attorneys in the field have been reluctant to file complaints for fear of retaliation against clients. So this group of law professors “Accountability NY”
is filing them, despite not being party to these cases:
https://accountabilityny.org
is filing them, despite not being party to these cases:
https://accountabilityny.org
5/ Whether the strategy will lead to more discipline is a matter of politics/resources. Grievance committees have long been criticized for largely operating in secret + doing little to prosecutors who break the rules (See this by @jbsapien) https://www.propublica.org/article/who-polices-prosecutors-who-abuse-their-authority-usually-nobody
6/ Law professors/former grievance committee members we spoke to say the committees will likely distinguish between violations that vary in severity (summation misconduct vs Brady) + in intent. They’ll also be likely to look more at those with multiple misconduct incidents.
7/ Some are also skeptical that the grievance committees will go back + review flagged prosecutors’ whole careers—a resource-intensive demand that Accountability NY has made. Rohan Bolt, one of the 3 wrongfully convicted men in Queens, thinks they should:
8/ Before his arrest + murder conviction, Rohan Bolt was a happily married Jamaican restaurant owner in East Elmhurst with four kids. He had no criminal history except for minor marijuana violations. After his imprisonment, his wife left + he missed watching his kids growing up.
9/ For Bolt, disbarment is the very least that should happen to the trial prosecutor who wrongfully convicted him. On the very day Bolt was sentenced to fifty years to life, the Queens DA promoted that prosecutor, per public records we obtained:
10/ Accountability NY says it filed its 1st raft of complaints in Queens because of the late DA’s reputation for cultivating a culture of winning at all costs. As we previously reported, internal docs show DA Richard Brown was aware of internal misconduct but rarely took action:
11/ In the coming months the group of law professors plans to file dozens more complaints against current/former prosecutors in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Long Island.
