By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In a stunning revelation quietly received this week by the New York press corps, Gang Land News journalist Jerry Capeci broke a monster story: he revealed after two decades that a prolific mafia witness alleges he was coerced into sex with an FBI special agent who helped handle him while he was wearing a wire …
First Amendment
Free Speech for All?
As Justice Lewis Powell wrote in 1980 in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Serv. Commission, “there is no de minimis exception for a speech restriction that lacks sufficient tailoring or justification.” Even for someone convicted of a sex offense, like James Cornelio, who was required to divulge internet identifiers to the state …
Can the Supreme Court survive the stench?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Two unprecedented things happened in the legal world this week. First, someone at the Supreme Court—in an unheard of breach of protocol—leaked the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health out to the public. Second, the substance of Dobbs draft indicated that for the first time ever, the Supreme Court is …
Welcome 2021
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma As the calendar turned and the weather cooled, the plan was to say goodbye to the awful year 2020 with the happy announcements that former Manhattan ADA Tess Cohen had joined our team as of counsel to the firm, we had changed our business name to ZMO Law PLLC (after 15 years …
DNA, Racism, and the Assault on Democracy
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Some points from my experience defending violent crime and debunking police lies can help understand what happened in Washington yesterday without falling back on hollow judgments about how awful other people are. First, as the climate scientist Jim Lovelock told me when I was ten years old, tribal warfare is in our …
Is a newspaper a newspaper if it does not have a newsroom?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma A year or so working as a reporter at 220 E. 42nd Street around 1993 completely changed my life. It was part of nearly four years I spent on the staff at the Daily News, once one of the largest-circulation publications in the world but already in the midst of a long, …
Criminal Defense in the Time of Coronavirus
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma I often say that our clients come to us on the worst day of their lives, the day they are arrested, or learned that a loved one was arrested and may be separated from them for a very long time. As the world faces a health crisis whose proportions remain unknown, the …
“I will be absolutely, completely free”
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma “Motion Granted.” With those words, the Hon. Joseph Zayas of Queens Supreme Court vacated the murder conviction and dismissed the indictment against Felipe Rodriguez. It was a triumphant end to a fight that has consumed our office since 2015 and the Innocence Project since 2007. In all those years, Mr. Rodriguez was …
The judge gave the FBI a warrant to break into computers in Virginia. They used it in New York. Good faith?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Twelve federal appeals courts have said that the FBI acted in good faith when they used a Virginia warrant to search thousands of computers around the world in the controversial Playpen child pornography case. Our office last week asked for a special hearing in the Second Circuit to challenge that conclusion, with …
In Maryland, you can be prosecuted for exploiting…yourself
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma In the latest perversion of the laws against child pornography, Maryland’s highest court late last month upheld the conviction of a teenage girl for sending around a one-minute video of herself performing fellatio. The recipient of the fellatio was not prosecuted. Neither were the girl’s erstwhile friends who, after a falling out, …
Conviction Overturned for Client Accused of Importing over 100 Kilos of Heroin
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Judge Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York ruled yesterday that ZMOLAW client Adamou Djibo is entitled to a new trial because the government wrongfully withheld thousands of pages of relevant information from a cooperating witness’s cell phone. The reversal follows a remand from the Second Circuit: the appeals court …
SDNY Says Prison Brass Can be Sued for Sex Abuse of Inmate
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Top New York State officials claimed that they cannot be sued for the sex abuse, cover-up, and retaliation against Yekatrina Pusepa, a female inmate at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, at the hands of a prison guard. Last week, a federal judge said they were wrong. In October 2017, our office, partnering with …
Countdown: Child Sex Abuse Survivors Have Less Than a Year to Sue for Damages
By Victoria Medley Senate Bill S2440, the New York Child Victims Act, was signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday. The new law, which has been a goal of victims’ rights advocates for years, extends the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims to file civil lawsuits, reviving old claims that, …
Big Changes to Deadlines in Child Sex Abuse Cases
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma On Monday, the New York Legislature passed a series of reforms that will significantly impact civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions for sexual abuse of children. Senate Bill S2440, or the Child Victims Act, extends the statutes of limitations to allow victims who are abused before age 18 more time to file lawsuits — …
Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Federal Child Pornography Charges
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The U.S. Sentencing Commission kicked off the new year with a comprehensive report analyzing data from federal sex offense cases. The report, which runs 81 pages plus a 62-page appendix of charts and graphs, contains some eye-opening conclusions. The most significant for child pornography cases is this: even though there is “little …
The Federal Criminal Justice Reform that Wasn’t
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma As of December 27, there were 180,429 prisoners in federal custody. Think about that for a minute — about a fifth of the population of San Francisco is behind bars for interstate crimes. No one seriously thinks this many people should be housed, clothed, fed, and secured with federal tax dollars. (More …
Spending Thanksgiving at Home
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Our office had two happy results in cases in the last twenty-four hours, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. I won’t use names to protect client confidentiality, but here is the short version of how two men will pass a more peaceful Thanksgiving than they have in a long time. Our …
A Holistic Defense Leads to Less Time Locked Up
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma People who seek out criminal lawyers are human beings, in all their vast complexity. An important part of our jobs as lawyers is to reveal the full person to the court: their prior conduct, the quality of their relationships, their health and addiction issues, and their prospects for the future. If a …