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 is only the latest episode in a long string of below-par conditions and neglect at the federal Bureau of Prisons’ Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which houses 1,600 New York City detainees waiting for their ..read more

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma I woke up this morning to the tenth anniversary of the most important day of my legal career and an even more important day in the life of my treasured client, Antonio Yarbough. On February 6, 2014, Antonio and his co-defendant Sharrif Wilson walked out of Supreme Court in Brooklyn as free men. They had been locked away for 7,903 days for a horrific triple homicide committed by someone else. The killer struck again seven years later, leaving his semen inside the body of his victim, just as he left his skin cells under the fingernails of Tony’s mother, Annie Yarbough ..read more

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 first degree perjury, landing him a four-to-eight year sentence. His crime? Running away with a stranger's phone during a biker-and-jaywalker screaming match gone wrong. Greene is now serving a lengthy sentence for snatching a phone, during an argument, that was returned to its owner wit ..read more

New York Governor Kathy Hochul swiftly signed the Rape is Rape bill into law this week, purporting to reform New York’s criminal sexual assault and rape statutes to make them fairer to survivors. While the new laws are somewhat more rational, they tend to expand the scope of the rape statutes in a way that is at best meaningless and at worst could lower the burden of proof for prosecutors trying to lock people up for rape. Read overly broadly, they could even make it possible to commit rape “over clothing.” The new laws go into effect next fall and generally won’t affect currently pending case ..read more

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 like a minor and wonky change — it would have prevented prosecutors from requiring individuals pleading guilty to waive their right to appeal of suppression decisions by lower court judges. So how would this bill have curbed police misconduct? Right now in New York State court ..read more

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died Friday. She will be remembered as the first woman justice, a fearless Republican who put principles of liberty and the rule of law above her personal distaste for abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, a case that safeguarded a woman’s right to choose for the following thirty years. But for criminal lawyers — and especially for their clients — Justice O’Connor’s most important opinion was written eight years earlier and would come to define how we do our jobs for three generations of criminal defe ..read more

By Tess Cohen Advocates for criminal justice reform are celebrating as Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Clean Slate Act into law, making millions of New Yorkers now eligible to have their criminal records automatically sealed. Before the new law was signed, New York only allowed special categories of people to apply to seal their convictions based on an expensive and time-consuming application to a state judge. Now, a person will have their conviction automatically sealed if they meet the following criteria: It has been three years (in the case of a misdemeanor) or eight years (in the case o ..read more

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma With November upon us, the window is closing quickly on the New York Adult Survivors Act, which gave adult victims of sexual assault a chance to bring their claims in court even if the assult happened years ago. The law became effective for one year starting on November 24, 2022. That means that November 23, 2023 is the last day to bring old claims under the Adult Survivors Act. If you were raped, sexually abused, or sexually assaulted and want to seek compensation for your injuries, speak to a qualified lawyer immediately. Preparing legal papers takes time and there ..read more

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 and providing information against the likes of Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, Peter Gotti, and dozens of other alleged mobsters. Michael “Cookie” D’Urso provided information to convict “more than 70” New York Mafia figures, but he harbored a dark secret, according ..read more

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma As the school year and the fiscal year and the biblical year all get underway, ZMO Law is settling into its new routine. We announced earlier this month that Tess Cohen is now a partner at the firm with increased responsibility for expanding our services to clients. We have a brilliant new paralegal, Ginger Semko, a veteran of both the NYU undergraduate mock trial team and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office in Queens. We have a new office manager and marketing director, Daijah Imani Allen and a new law student intern from Brooklyn Law School. The office on Lexing ..read more