Civil Rights Advocacy

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 …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Does putting an illegal image in a shared folder on LimeWire or 360Share constitute “distribution” of child pornography if there is no proof anyone actually downloaded the image? No, according to a new decision in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In United States v. David George Husmann, the appellate court reversed …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has written to the mayor and other city officials advising them that an investigation has revealed systematic tolerance of abuse of adolescent inmates on Rikers Island. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara concluded that “adolescent inmates at Rikers are not adequately protected from …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In a case recently decided in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Scott Kopstein went to trial after engaging with an undercover officer on the internet and, thinking she was twelve years old, sending her child pornography. He did not really deny the substance of the charges, but he argued entrapment — …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma At last, some good news for the thousands of people in federal prison for drug crimes who are ready to get on with their lives. The United States Sentencing Commission today voted to make the two-level reduction for narcotics offenses retroactive — in other words, people who have already been sentenced for drug crimes …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma One month after Albany County passed its anti-cyberbullying law, an anonymous teenager obligingly posted “Cohoes Flame” — a Facebook page of photos of his classmates along with crude “descriptions of their alleged sexual practices and predilections, sexual partners and other types of personal information.” An investigation revealed the teen’s identity; he was arrested and charged …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma We have written before about how sex offender registration rules routinely lead to defendants being unfairly assessed as moderate- to high-risk offenders. Now, unhappily, the Court of Appeals, which is New York’s highest court, has embraced the harsher — if not more irrational and emotionally charged — approach to these cases, permitting courts …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The Honorable Harold Baer, who passed away earlier this week, was one of the legendary judges deciding cases in federal court in Manhattan. A stalwart for civil liberties who landed in the middle of contentious political battles, he was also quick witted and plainspoken in court. Though I only appeared before him …

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In general, federal authorities interview people after their arrests without recording. We advise our clients to invoke their Miranda rights and refuse to make any statements until consulting with an attorney. Experience shows that statements made by defendants when they are first arrested — they are frightened, their guard is down, they …