The firm filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the case of Farhane v. United States today. The Government is trying to denaturalize naturalized citizen Abderrahmane Farhane on the basis of his 2006 guilty plea. We argue that the Sixth Amendment requires defense counsel to advise naturalized […]
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Firm principal Joel Rudin was quoted in a recent Times article about the Queens District Attorney’s Office. The article also cited information compiled by the firm showing that, between 1985 and 2017, judges had ruled that Queens prosecutors had “failed to disclose information to the defense or committed other misconduct” at least 117 times. You […]
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In August 2020, the firm won the reversal of a Suffolk County murder conviction because the trial judge made an improper deal with a witness to testify for the prosecution. People v. Greenspan, 186 A.D.3d 505 (2d Dep’t 2020). On remand, in January 2021, our motion convinced the trial court to dismiss the case on […]
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In a precedent-setting decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that prison officials violated Devar Hurd’s Eight Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process when they held him in prison for almost a year after his conditional release date. While the Court of Appeals […]
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A recent article in Gothamist profiled Jawaun Fraser’s lawsuit against the City of New York. Mr. Fraser’s conviction was overturned when it came out after trial that the narcotics officers who arrested him—and provided the only evidence against him at trial—had been sued dozens of times for allegedly making false arrests and fabricating evidence. You […]
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The City of New York has agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle a wrongful conviction lawsuit brought by Shuaib O’Neill. As alleged in the lawsuit, NYPD officers falsely claimed to have found marijuana and a gun on Mr. O’Neill during a stop-and-frisk, and coerced a false confession from him. Mr. O’Neill served three years […]
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While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, it has had an especially deadly toll behind bars. People in jail and prison are among the most vulnerable, and lack the ability to protect themselves by social distancing. Since the pandemic hit, associates Jacob Loup and Matt Wasserman have filed several sentence-reduction motions in federal […]
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The City of New York has agreed to pay $1.725 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Ricardo Benitez, who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for almost 6 years for an armed robbery he did not commit. The firm also represented Mr. Benitez in a parallel Court of Claims lawsuit against the State of New […]
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Firm principal Joel Rudin was quoted in a recent New Yorker article about the Manhattan District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit. The article details the shortcomings of the Manhattan DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit through the specific cases of Eric Smokes and David Warren, who were sentenced as teenagers and maintain their innocence to this day. You […]
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Firm principal Joel Rudin was highlighted in a recent Queens Eagle article for his depositions of the former Acting Queens County District Attorney, John M. Ryan, and other executives within the DA’s Office. Joel conducted these depositions for three lawsuits claiming that the firm’s clients were wrongfully convicted because of a policy or practice of […]
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