Federal sentences for people caught up in drug crimes are nothing less than soul-sucking. They are guided, at least in the first instance, by the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which have often been criticized as being too high and too much driven by drug quantity rather than other factors, such as the person’s individual circumstances …
Sentencing
Brooklyn MDC? Too awful to sentence you there.
By Anne AyotteZMO Law PLLC Paralegal Specialist An Eastern District of New York judge has joined SDNY Judge Jesse Furman in refusing to send a defendant to the Metropolitan Detention Center because of the abhorrent, violent conditions at New York City’s only jail for people accused of federal crimes. On August 5th, defendant Daniel Colucci …
Justice Behind Bars: Judge Furman calls out the nightmarish conditions at the Brooklyn MDC
By Emily Furman While most New Yorkers enjoy their Easter and Passover meals this Spring, dozens of MDC Brooklyn detainees endure a different kind of cuisine— dishes tainted by maggots and weevils, according to reports by several Federal Defenders. Despite MDC officials confirming such gross contaminations, inmates continue to be served insect-laden meals. Bug-infested food …
Chief Judge Wilson, Restorative Justice, and Keeping Your Cool on New York’s Streets
By Emily Furman Remember Dustin Hoffman’s iconic “I’m walkin’ here!”? It’s a phrase on the tongue of every New Yorker, but a recent New York State court decision has given street hollers a new level of seriousness. In 2017, Mr. Fabian Greene was convicted of one count of fourth degree larceny and two counts of …
Governor Hochul vetoed bills aimed to curb police misconduct and overturn wrongful convictions
By Tess Cohen At the end of the year, Governor Hochul vetoed two hard fought bills advocated for by criminal justice reformers. Though the signing of Clean Slate remains a huge win for advocates, two bills aimed directly at injustices in the system were rejected by the Governor over the winter holidays. The first seems …
A kind of justice
By Zach Margulis-Ohnuma She sat in front of me, bald, shellshocked, speechless, drug addled. The government had charged her with moving massive quantities of GBL and meth, gal Friday to a big-time drug dealer working the nightclubs. She was looking at a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence, no bail. The plan was to send her to …
What the Sentences for Child Pornography Are Supposed To Be
We heard a lot in the last week about judges who sentence people to too little prison time for child pornography. In case it was not obvious coming from foamy-mouthed demagogues in what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body, it was all hogwash. Child pornography sentences are off-the-charts too high in almost every case. …
Federal Mandatory Minimum? You Can Still Get Compassionate Release
By Tess Cohen The Second Circuit recently decided in United States v. Halvon that federal defendants can have their sentence reduced under the compassionate release statute even if the reduction means they are incarcerated for less time than required by mandatory minimum sentences. This is good news for people convicted of serious federal crimes. The …
What Do District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s New Policies Mean for Manhattan?
By Tess Cohen Manhattan has a new district attorney who is introducing change on a scale not seen in decades, but reactions to the changes have been overblown, if not alarmist. DA Bragg’s Day One Memo explains that his policies are based on data proving reflexive incarceration does not make us safer. As the New …
Is the Kenosha verdict a tragedy?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The second major Black Lives Matter verdict is in, and it was an acquittal. After the first verdict, the murder conviction of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for intentionally asphyxiating George Floyd, the Rev. Al Sharpton said “we don’t celebrate a man going to jail, we would rather George be alive.” Many …
The Dangers of False Rhetoric Around Bail Reform
By Tess Cohen CBS New York recently reported that New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea struggled to back up his repeated claims that the 2019 bail reform law is the reason that gun violence increased in New York City during 2020. This criticism comes as no surprise given that Shea’s claims were directly contradicted …
Recidivism and Federal Sentencing
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Many of the outrageously high sentences doled out in federal court are driven by fear — fear that a person convicted of a crime once will go on to commit another crime once he or she is freed back into the community. That’s called recidivism. Judges care about it and the U.S. …
Some thoughts on Mother’s Day from a criminal defense lawyer
BY ZACHARY MARGULIS-OHNUMA One thing every single one of my clients has in common is that they all have a mother. That’s one of the many responses I give when asked the iconic question, how can you defend criminals when you know they are guilty? In many of our cases, moms play an outsized role. …
The end of police propaganda? New NYPD crime statistics show the sky is not falling
Guest Post by Adam Elewa, Esq. New York implemented historic and significant criminal justice reform in 2020, including a bail reform bill that led to a “substantial reduction in jail incarceration,” a discovery reform bill that replaced one the most restrictive discovery laws in the nation (what used to be known as the “blindfold law”), …
A New Way to Avoid Mandatory Minimum Sentences
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Federal criminal cases in court are driven by mandatory minimum sentences. Drugs, guns, child pornography and sex trafficking (among others) all carry mandatory minimum sentences which used to mean that, if the government has the evidence and won’t let you plead to a lesser crime, you do the time. That just might have changed …
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces executive clemency for ZMOLAW client
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma We are pleased to announce that the governor of New York has granted a sentence commutation to our client, Teara Fatico, reducing her sentence in connection with a 2011 burglary by two years. She will be eligible for release on parole in January 2021. Ms. Fatico had cooperated with the Niagara County …
ZMOLAW adds attorney Ben Notterman
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma We are delighted to announce that Benjamin Notterman has joined the ZMO Law PLLC as an associate attorney. Mr. Notterman comes to us from the New York University Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, where he was a research fellow investigating executive clemency under the direction of Prof. Rachel Barkow. As …
“Release as many vulnerable people as possible”
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma New York City is home to it’s own archipelago of three federal jails, three borough jails, eight functioning jails on Rikers Island, two locked prison wards, and lockup facilities in each of seven state and federal criminal courthouses in the five boroughs. The best estimate is that there are upwards of 10,000 …
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 …
Why clemency is good
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Have a look at David Leonhardt’s recent NY Times newsletter, which posits that executive clemency is a critical component of our current criminal justice system. The newsletter came in the wake of scathing criticism of Pres. Trump’s use of clemency to help his political friends. Approximately two million Americans are behind bars, …
Freeing Felipe Rodriguez
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Thirteen years ago Nina Morrison, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project – the organization, founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, that spawned the movement to use DNA to free the innocent in the United States – came across the case of Felipe Rodriguez. Felipe was a Brooklyn construction worker and …
“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 …
District court lowers sentence from 225 to 200 months after appeal. Still too long, appeals court says.
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma A 200-month sentence imposed on a first-time child pornography offender was thrown out by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday because the judge erroneously assumed that the defendant must have committed a prior sex offense. The reversal was the second time that the circuit court vacated the sentence imposed on …
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 …