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Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley will implement a conviction integrity unit for her office, just as the New York State Bar Association approved a report that recommends conviction integrity units in every county.
“I have been working to put together a conviction integrity unit, and have tasked my first assistant, Perry Duckles, with finalizing a model for my approval. I believe that in the coming weeks, we will have established protocols that will examine claims of innocence, and will allow for the investigation of such claims found to have merit,” Doorley wrote in a statement.
“To that end, we have already engaged members of the community to help us in this endeavor and are in the process of formalizing their roles and involvement. While this office has always strived to ensure the integrity of our convictions, through rigorous training of our attorneys and meticulous appellate review of innocence claims, the creation of a conviction integrity unit to further this goal is the next logical step, and one that I am proactively taking for the good of our community,” she wrote.
The report from the bar association’s Task Force on Wrongful Convictions also recommends a change to the current criminal law to allow a new evidence claim after a guilty plea. And the panel also called for new legislation to improve the quality of forensic science admitted into evidence.
“The recent report issued by the New York State Bar Association does not come as a surprise. In fact, district attorneys around the state have been speaking for months on this topic, sharing ideas as to the best ways to implement these programs,” Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley wrote in a statement.
“I place the utmost importance on ensuring that each and every conviction that results from a prosecution in this office, is just, and serves justice,” she said.
“Over the last decade, we have seen an increased awareness on the issue of wrongful convictions and the unreliability of forensic evidence. This task force’s recommendations, if implemented, will give wrongfully convicted persons additional recourse for exoneration and will make it less likely that some wrongful convictions will occur in the first place,” Bar Association President Michael Miller said in a news release.
The report calls for each district attorney’s office in the state to have conviction integrity unity (CIU) to review cases. The panela also recommended a statewide fund to help pay for CIUs and their work. The panel also called on the state Legislature to grant the judiciary the power to issue investigative subpoenas for CIU reviews.
Because of recent research showing that misapplication of forensic science is the second most common contributing factor to wrongful convictions, the task force recommends new legislation to improve the quality of forensic science admitted into evidence.
Under the proposed new statute, expert testimony in criminal cases would have to be shown to be based on sufficient facts or data and, the methods used must be shown to be reproducible and accurate by empirical studies.
The task force also called for a new section to New York Criminal Procedure Law that would permit a newly discovered evidence claim after a guilty plea.
Currently, the law requires “probability that had such evidence been received at the trial the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendant.”
The task force recommends that where a defendant pleaded guilty, a newly discovered evidence claim requires “a substantial probability that the defendant was actually innocent of the offense of which he or she was convicted.”
The task force also called for the collection of data related to new laws regarding eyewitness identification and recording of interrogations to better determine if additional training or resources are needed and to determine if evidence is being collected in the way the ensures the intent of the law is being realized.
