Federal Judge in a Position to Know Urges Governor to Sign Prosecutorial Oversight Bill

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma

In the Daily News yesterday, Judge Frederic Block of the Eastern District of New York — who handled the Jabbar Collins civil suit that ended in a $13 million bill to taxpayers to compensate for police misconduct in Brooklyn — urged Gov. Cuomo to sign the bill creating a commission on prosecutorial conduct. Ethical, self-confident district attorneys will welcome the oversight. The District Attorneys Association of the State of New York is wrongheaded to oppose it.

Wrongful convictions are life-destroying not only to people wrongfully convicted but also to crime victims, especially victims of future crimes that could have been prevented had the right person been prosecuted in the first place. Prosecutors are almost never disciplined, let alone prosecuted themselves, even for the most egregious misconduct such as holding back exculpatory evidence or knowingly presenting coerced testimony.

Judge Block, who has overseen an active criminal docket for nearly a quarter of a century, writes that trial judges are not in a position to prevent prosecutors’ abuse: “If a prosecutor withholds or tampers with evidence, we probably won’t know about it. And even when we discover that prosecutors have committed serious constitutional violations, our power to directly sanction them is extremely limited.”

The State Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct passed in June with bipartisan support will help bring integrity into New York criminal proceedings. Judge Block is right: the governor should sign it.