Child Pornography

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Seven years ago next Tuesday, NYPD police officers shot and killed Mauricio Jaquez in his Bronx apartment. They claimed he was holding a knife. Last week, a civil jury came back finding that the last shot was reasonable, even though it was fired into the back of Mauricio’s head after he had …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma On April 12, 2009, New York City police officers shot and killed Mauricio Jaquez, an emotionally disturbed man, in his apartment in the Bronx. On Monday, seven years later, one of the officers, Sgt. William Flores, will stand trial before a Southern District of New York jury for depriving Mr. Jaquez of …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma New York passed the Sex Offender Registration Act to be retroactive to people who still were on probation or parole as of January 21, 1996. In the months that followed, all probationers and parolees previously convicted of an enumerated offense, as well as people newly convicted, started registering. At that time, registration for low-risk offenders …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Video, transcripts and other information about principal attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma’s testimony at the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s public hearing on November 5 is now available. The testimony, on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, endorsed a proposed amendment to the Sentencing Guidelines to eliminate the “residual clause” portion of the …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Said Abdullah was just about to finish probation in 1996 when the New York Legislature passed the Sex Offender Registration Act. He was forced to register as a sex offender and, after a federal lawsuit put the brakes on SORA for several years, was adjudicated a Level Three offender by Westchester County …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The United States Sentencing Commission writes the Sentencing Guidelines which are the starting point for all federal sentences. The Guidelines define the term “crime of violence” in part through a “residual clause” that embraces any conviction involving a “serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” If you have two or more of these as prior crimes, you …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma On June 18, 1992, five New York City detectives forced Sharrif Wilson, 15, to “confess” to a crime he did not commit, leading to his wrongful conviction in a gruesome triple homicide. The same detectives also got Antonio Yarbough to sign a false statement they wrote out for him. To get the boys to confess, …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma As a law firm advocating for people accused or convicted of sex offenses, we focus on how sex offender registration sweeps in too many people and labels them as far higher risks than they actually are. The biggest problem with landing on a sex offender registry is the stigma associated with being …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In a rare reversal of a guilty plea, the Third Department recently vacated a child abuse conviction because the wrong crime was charged in the felony complaint, the document that starts a case against a defendant. On January 31, 2012, defendant Paul O’Neill pled guilty to a superior court information charging him with two very …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma It should seem obvious, but some federal courts (a lot, actually) have missed the fact that intentional sexual touching of an inmate by a guard for the purpose of sexual gratification or humiliation violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The ZMO Law PLLC and Perlmutter & McGuinness, P.C., …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In a decision that “should be written with tears,” Judge Jack Weinstein has scheduled a remarkable hearing for August 3 to explore how to handle a gut-wrenching case of a child-abuse survivor who apparently went on to use and produce child pornography himself. Last month, 26-year-old Darnell Washington pled guilty to charges …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma A fascinating recent episode of Freakonomics Radio covers in depth the economics of sex offenses, sex offender registries, and the special restrictions placed on people convicted of sex offenses. One commentator calculates how much sex offenses cost their victims — in both out-of-pocket expenses and based on jury awards for psychological damages — …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Why do innocent people confess? Principal attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma will join Prof. Saul Kassin and Ron Russo, Esq. for a lecture and discussion at the New York City Bar Association to explore the phenomenon of false confessions. Prof. Kassin is a leading social scientist who has written extensively on false confessions, helping form …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma As the New York Times reported yesterday, criminal lawyers are increasingly offering short biographical videos at sentencing to help judges understand their clients better. While we almost always submit detailed sentencing packages for our clients, in some cases a sentencing video can help humanize a client in a way that a letter or …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma New York state’s highest court recently reversed a defendant’s level three sex offender designation because, even though he did not complete treatment in prison, he was prevented from doing so by his poor prison disciplinary record. Under risk factor 12, ten points are assessed for failure to accept responsibility, and 15 are assessed …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma To the great relief of anyone who believes in the rule of law, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby — thirty-five years old and four months on the job — filed charges on Friday against six police officers who caused the death of Freddie Gray last month. The officers were arrested and released …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In a series of quick orders, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment this week to New York City police officers who shot Mauricio Jaquez at least five times, including in the back of the head, at his apartment in the Bronx. They said he came …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma A federal jury in Manhattan will hear the case of the Estate of Mauricio Jaquez v. City of New York beginning on April 20, 2015. The case will be tried by attorneys Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma and Sharlene Morris of the ZMO Law PLLC. The complaint, which survived the City’s motion for summary judgment …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In an important decision that will affect the quality of life and prospects for rehabilitation for sex offenders, the New York Court of Appeals has struck down local residency restrictions, saying they conflict with state law. Well over 100 municipalities across New York have made their own rules limiting where ex-offenders can live, often without …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In a brief filed today, attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma criticized what appears to have become a routine practice in the Eastern District of New York of handling certain prosecutions entirely in secret. The brief is an appeal from a district court order allowing the government to prosecute an alleged terrorist entirely behind closed doors. …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The National Registry of Exonerations has put out its annual report detailing a record number of convictions overturned in 2014. In New York, 14 men and three women were exonerated of crimes ranging from homicide to drug trafficking. More than half the New York cases — at least ten — come out …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The City Bar’s panel on wrongful convictions in Brooklyn is now available for viewing. The Panel was introduced by Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma and included client Antonio Yarbough. Here it is:

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Brooklyn in the late 1980s and early 1990s was ground zero for an explosion of homicides without precedent before or since. The violence was accompanied by fear, and, all too often, police misconduct that led to false convictions. So far this year, incoming Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson has agreed to exonerate ten …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Defendants accused of possession of child pornography are frequently also accused of being pedophiles or of engaging in hands-on abuse of children. A fascinating op-ed piece in the New York Times on Sunday makes the argument that pedophilia is a fixed mental condition and not a choice or lifestyle decision. It points to a website, Virtuous …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In case there wasn’t enough reason not to use file-sharing (for pretty much anything), here is one more: police around the country have a relatively new tool called RoundUp that crawls through file-sharing sites searching for child pornography. In many jurisdictions, merely posting a single child pornography file to a file-sharing cite such …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Everyone arrested in Brooklyn is brought to Central Booking, the maze-like warren of cold cement beneath the courthouse at 120 Schermerhorn Street downtown. It is not a pleasant place. You wait there for hours while cases upstairs grind ahead until it’s your turn to see a judge. In fact, conditions in Brooklyn …