Distinguished legal, criminal justice, and social science scholars, attorneys, and judges examine all phases of New York’s juvenile justice system, from police-youth interactions through post-adjudication detention and alternatives, based on a symposium held at New York Law School in April 2011 and sponsored by the Diane Abbey Law Center for Children and Families.

Volume 56, Issue 4 (2011-2012)

Table of Contents

I. Juvenile Justice Reform in New York

• Foreword: The Past, Present, and Future of Juvenile Justice Reform in New York State by Stephan A. Newman.
• Juvenile Justice Reform: Now Is the Moment by Judith S. Kaye.
• Reflections on Juvenile Justice Reform in New York by Jeremy Travis.
• Growing Up Policed in the Age of Aggressive Policing Policies by Brett G. Stoudt, Michelle Fine and Madeline Fox.
• Criminalizing the Classroom: The Rise of Aggressive Policing and Zero Tolerance Discipline in New York City Public Schools by Udi Ofer.
• Judging Children as Children: Reclaiming New York’s Progressive Tradition by Michael A. Corriero.
• When the Cure Makes You Ill: Seven Core Principles to Change the Course of Youth Justice by Gabrielle Prisco.
• Reducing Juvenile Detention: Notes from an Experiment on Staten Island by Nancy L. Fishman.

II. Notes

• Coming Clean: The Erosion of Juvenile Miranda Rights in New York State by Justin Ashenfelter.
• Regulation LLC by Raymond P. Girnys.
• Turning the Lights On: An Analysis of the Fiduciary Duty Provisions of the New York State Public Authority Reform Act by Adam Paul Gordon.

IV. Case Comments

• SEC v. Byers by David M. Brown.
• Bouchat v. Baltimore Ravens Ltd. Partnership by John Imhoff.
• People v. Givenni by Colette Siesholtz.

Media Contact: LaToya Jordan, 212.431.2191, latoya.jordan@nyls.edu

The New York Law School Law Review and NYC Bar Association Publish Essays Reflecting on Lawyers and the Law in New York City 10 Years after 9/11

New York, NY (February 23, 2012)—The New York Law School Law Review announces the publication of its latest issue, which includes essays reflecting on lawyers and the law in New York City 1o years after 9/11 by Joseph W. Armbrust Michael A. Cardozo, Kenneth R. Feinberg, and Donna Lieberman sharing their unique perspectives on 9/11 and addressing topics including: the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund as a model for future publicly funded compensation programs; civil liberties, law enforcement, and national security in a post-9/11 world; legal issues arising from the rebuilding at Ground Zero and New York City’s response to more than 10,000 lawsuits filed against the city as a result of the attacks; and the effect of the attacks on a law firm that was located in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. The essays are based on remarks the authors gave at Lawyers and the Law in New York City: Ten Years After 9/11, a panel discussion held on September 8, 2011 at New York Law School and sponsored in collaboration with the New York City Affairs Committee of the New York City Bar Association.

“Each one of the distinguished lawyers contributing to this issue has played a unique role in the story of how lawyers and the law have evolved in the ten years since September 11, 2001. In areas ranging from the City’s response, to the compensation of victims, to new civil liberties issues, to the rebuilding of law firms lost, lawyers have been central players in the city’s recovery over the past decade.  We were privileged to co-host the event at which these papers were originally delivered, and to reflect on the past ten years with all of the attendees of the event,”  said Abbe Gluck, Chair of the New York City Affairs Committee of the New York City Bar Association and Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.  More than 170 people were in attendance.

The essays are:

• Reflections: The Trajectory of the Legal Profession in a Post-9/11 World by Joseph W. Armbrust, Jr., Partner, Sidley Austin LLP.
• The Aftermath of 9/11: Reflections of Michael A. Cardozo by Michael A. Cardozo, New York City Corporation Counsel.
• The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001: Policy and Precedent by Kenneth R. Feinberg, Partner, Feinberg Rozen, LLP.; Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2011.
• Infringement on Civil Liberties After 9/11, by Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The issue also contains 10 thought-provoking articles on the topic of wrongful convictions from the November 2010 symposium Exonerating the Innocent: Pre-Trial Innocence Procedures held at New York Law School.

To view or download the articles, visit the Law Review’s website. They are also available through LexisNexis, Westlaw, and HeinOnline. See 56 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 825-1256 (2011-12).

About the New York Law School Law Review
The New York Law School Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship edited and published by students at New York Law School four times a year. The Law Review is the largest law review in the United States, with 2011–2012 membership of more than 180 students, led by an editorial board assisted by staff editors, online staff editors, and members, working together with a full-time faculty publisher, to make all editorial and publication decisions. The Law Review has both a scholarly and an educational mission. It serves as an academic forum for legal scholarship by sponsoring four symposia each year and publishing the scholarship produced through those events. The Law Review also offers its students an important learning and professional development experience, providing opportunities for members to develop their writing, research, and editing skills, as well as other skills that are important for the successful practice of law, including communication, organizational, and project management skills. The Law Review is printed by Joe Christensen, Inc., in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Law Review’s editorial and general offices are located at New York Law School, 185 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013. Symposium proposals may be submitted to the Law Review by U.S. mail or via email at law_review@nyls.edu. Tel. 212-431-2109. www.nylslawreview.com.

Media Contact: LaToya Jordan, 212.431.2191, latoya.jordan@nyls.edu

New York Law School Law Review Issue Examines Systemic Changes to the Criminal Justice System to Avoid Wrongful Convictions

New York, NY (February 28, 2012)—The New York Law School Law Review announces the publication of its latest issue, Exonerating the Innocent: Pre-Trial Innocence Procedures. The 10 articles in this issue, by 14 scholars and practitioners who have been involved in exonerating innocent criminal defendants, are unique because they examine proposals for fundamental changes and even wholesale alternatives to our adversarial criminal justice system that could address the problem of wrongful convictions,  including whether or how pre-trial “innocence procedures” or “innocence bureaus” could spare innocent defendants from long prison terms by allowing defendants to establish their innocence prior to or at trial.

“This issue of the Law Review provides an extraordinary critique of perhaps the greatest existential, but, unfortunately, real fear of any individual or society: the conviction and imprisonment, and even execution, of innocent people,” said Tim Bakken, Professor of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and co-organizer of the symposium.  “The societal failure is monumental.  American prisons, at any point in time, hold thousands of innocent people, while many wonder whether the plight of the innocent is the inevitable result of an imperfect justice system.  I don’t believe any innocent person should have to live or die in prison while taking one for the team.  There is a better way, and we have to be open to finding it.  This issue of the Law Review offers a path for doing so.”

“The articles in this New York Law School Law Review issue establish that American prisons hold thousands of innocent persons convicted of serious crimes.  These articles discuss innovative ways to save these innocent victims of a failed criminal justice system from the fate of spending long years behind bars or even death, while the guilty go free to commit other crimes,” said Lewis M. Steel, Of Counsel at Outten and Golden, LLC and co-organizer of the symposium.  “Band-Aid solutions don’t work, many of these authors say.  But the approaches proposed by some of these distinguished law professors just might.  All who seek a more functional criminal justice system which exonerates the innocent and convicts the guilty will benefit from the ideas in this issue.”

The Law Review issue features the following articles, which were presented at a symposium held in November 2010 at New York Law School, co-sponsored by the West Point Center for the Rule of Law:

• Exonerating the Innocent: Pretrial Innocence Procedures by Tim Bakken, Professor of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Lewis M. Steel, Of Counsel at Outten and Golden, LLC.
• Models of Justice to Protect Innocent Persons by Tim Bakken, Professor of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
• Innocence Is Different: Taking Innocence into Account In Reforming Criminal Procedure by D. Michael Risinger, John J. Gibbons Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law; and Lesley C. Risinger, Director, Last Resort Exoneration Project, Seton Hall University School of Law.
• Adversarial Inquisitions: Rethinking the Search for the Truth by Keith A. Findley, Clinical Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School; Co-Director, Wisconsin Innocence Project; President, Innocence Network.
• Convicting Lennie: Mental Retardation, Wrongful Convictions, and the Right to a Fair Trial by John H. Blume, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, and Director, Cornell Death Penalty Project; Sheri Lynn Johnson, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Assistant Director, Cornell Death Penalty Project; and Susan E. Millor, Cornell Law School, Class of 2012.
• Pretrial Procedures for Innocent People: Reforming Brady by Lisa Griffin, Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law.
• Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, and Sorting Criminal Prosecutions by Guilt or Innocence by Samuel R. Gross, Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
• Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit and the Importance of Getting It Right the First Time by Mike Ware, Adjunct Professor of Law, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law; Supervising Attorney of Wesleyan Innocence Project.
• The Problem of Convicting Innocent Persons: How Often Does It Occur and How Can It Be Prevented? by Leon Friedman, Joseph Kushner Professor of Civil Liberties Law at Hofstra Law School.
• Freeing the Guilty Without Protecting the Innocent: Some Skeptical Observations on Proposed New “Innocence” Procedures by Paul G. Cassell, Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.

As part of its visual scholarship project, Law Review editors also produced Exonerating the Innocent, a 10-minute video in which the symposium’s speakers, including Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld, debate the use of innocence procedures as a solution to the problem of wrongful convictions. It is available here.

To view or download the articles, visit the Law Review’s website. They are also available through LexisNexis, Westlaw, and HeinOnline. See 56 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 825-1256 (2011-12). The video Exonerating the Innocent can be viewed here. Recordings of the symposium panels are available here. Also included in this issue are essays reflecting on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, written by Joseph Armbrust, Michael Cardozo, Kenneth Feinberg, and Donna Lieberman in connection with an event titled Lawyers and the Law in New York City: Ten Years After 9/11, held on September 8, 2011 at New York Law School.

About the New York Law School Law Review
The New York Law School Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship edited and published by students at New York Law School four times a year. The Law Review is the largest law review in the United States, with 2011–2012 membership of more than 180 students, led by an editorial board assisted by staff editors, online staff editors, and members, working together with a full-time faculty publisher, to make all editorial and publication decisions. The Law Review has both a scholarly and an educational mission. It serves as an academic forum for legal scholarship by sponsoring four symposia each year and publishing the scholarship produced through those events. The Law Review also offers its students an important learning and professional development experience, providing opportunities for members to develop their writing, research, and editing skills, as well as other skills that are important for the successful practice of law, including communication, organizational, and project management skills. The Law Review is printed by Joe Christensen, Inc., in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Law Review’s editorial and general offices are located at New York Law School, 185 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013. Symposium proposals may be submitted to the Law Review by U.S. mail or via email at law_review@nyls.edu. Tel. 212-431-2109. www.nylslawreview.com.

Separately, the authors of this introductory article recommended similar changes to the adversarial system in response to data showing that significant numbers of innocent persons have been convicted and imprisoned. Read More…

Models of Justice to Protect Innocent Persons by Tim Bakken

This article discusses various approaches to the problem of innocent-person convictions and concludes that systemic change in the adversarial system is necessary. Read More…

Innocence Is Different: Taking Innocence into Account in Reforming the Search for the Truth by D. Michael Risinger and Lesley C. Risinger

It has often been said that “death is different,” meaning at a minimum that the ultimate finality of the death penalty requires both special standards for its imposition and special care in applying those standards.Read More…

Adversarial Inquisitions: Rethinking the Search for the Truth byKeith A. Findley

If one were asked to start from scratch and devise a system best suited to ascertaining the truth in criminal cases, and to ensuring that, to the extent any unavoidable errors in fact-finding occur, they do not fall on the shoulders of innocent suspects, what would that system look like? Read More…

Convicting Lennie: Mental Retardation, Wrongful Convictions, and the Right to a Fair Trial by John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, and Susan Millor

“Lennie” refers to Lennie Small, the intellectually disabled character in John Steinbeck’s famous novella Of Mice and Men, which tells the story of two Depression era wandering farmhands, George and Lennie, who dream of getting their own stake and living “off the fat of the land.” Read More…

Pretrial Procedures for Innocent People: Reforming Brady byLissa Griffin

This symposium, Exonerating the Innocent: Pre-Trial Innocence Procedures, presents an unusual and fascinating opportunity. The organizers of the symposium have proposed that the current adjudication process be scrapped for a defendant who certifies his innocence and waives all constitutional rights.  Read More…

Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, and Sorting Criminal Prosecutions by Guilt or Innocence by Samuel R. Gross

The fundamental problem with false convictions is that they are unobserved, and in general, unobservable. We don’t spot them when they happen—if we did, they wouldn’t happen—and in most cases we can’t identify them after the fact.  Read More…

Click here to view all articles from this issue.

Exonerating the Innocent: Pretrial Innocence Procedures

This symposium issue features ten articles by fourteen scholars and practitioners examining proposals for fundamental changes and even wholesale alternatives to our adversarial criminal justice system that could address the problem of wrongful convictions. These papers were presented at a November 2010 conference co-sponsored by the the New York Law School Law Review and the West Point Center for the Rule of Law.

It also features essays based on presentations made at an event co-sponsored by the Law Reviewa and the New York City Affairs Committee of the New York City Bar Association, entitled Lawyers and the Law in New York City: Ten Years After 9/11 in September, 2011.

Volume 56, Issue 3 (2011-2012)

Table of Contents

I. Exonerating the Innocent: Pretrial Innocence Procedures

• Exonerating the Innocent: Pretrial Innocence Procedures by Tim Bakken, Professor of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Lewis M. Steel, Of Counsel at Outten and Golden, LLC.
• Models of Justice to Protect Innocent Persons by Tim Bakken, Professor of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
• Innocence Is Different: Taking Innocence into Account in Reforming the Search for the Truth by D. Michael Risinger, John J. Gibbons Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law; and Lesley C. Risinger, Director, Last Resort Exoneration Project, Seton Hall University School of Law.
• Adversarial Inquisitions: Rethinking the Search for the Truth by Keith A. Findley, Clinical Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School; Co-Director, Wisconsin Innocence Project; President, Innocence Network.
• Convicting Lennie: Mental Retardation, Wrongful Convictions, and the Right to a Fair Trial by John H. Blume, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, and Director, Cornell Death Penalty Project; Sheri Lynn Johnson, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Assistant Director, Cornell Death Penalty Project; and Susan Millor, Cornell Law School, Class of 2012.
• Pretrial Procedures for Innocent People: Reforming Brady by Lissa Griffin, Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law.
• Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, and Sorting Criminal Prosecutions by Guilt or Innocence by Samuel R. Gross, Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
• Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit and the Importance of Getting It Right the First Time by Mike Ware, Adjunct Professor of Law, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law; Supervising Attorney of Wesleyan Innocence Project.
• The Problem of Convicting Innocent Persons: How Often Does It Occur and How Can It Be Prevented? by Leon Friedman, Joseph Kushner Professor of Civil Liberties Law at Hofstra Law School.
• Freeing the Guilty Without Protecting the Innocent: Some Skeptical Observations on Proposed New “Innocence” Procedures by Paul G. Cassell, Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.

II. Lawyers and the Law in New York City: Ten Years After 9/11

• Reflections: The Trajectory of the Legal Profession in a Post-9/11 World by Joseph W. Armbrust, Jr., Partner, Sidley Austin LLP.
• The Aftermath of 9/11: Reflections of Michael A. Cardozo by Michael A. Cardozo, New York City Corporation Counsel.
• The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001: Policy and Precedent by Kenneth R. Feinberg, Partner, Feinberg Rozen, LLP.; Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2011.
• Infringement on Civil Liberties After 9/11 by Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

III. Notes

• Getting Back to the Fourth Amendment: Warrantless Cell Phone Searches, Mireille Dee
• Affiliations: Foreign Law Firms’ Path into India, Christine Garg

IV. Case Comments

• Gaylord v. United States, Jeffrey Lawhorn
• People v. Harnett, Joanna C. Peck
• Bryant v. Media Right Productions, Inc., Molly Nehring

Media Contacts: Nancy Guida, 212.431.2325, nancy.guida@nyls.edu

LaToya Jordan, 212.431.2191, latoya.jordan@nyls.edu

New York Law School Presents Symposium on Wrongful Convictions

New York, NY (October 27, 2010)—The New York Law School Law Review and the West Point Center for the Rule of Law will convene legal experts to discuss ways to reduce the incidence of wrongful convictions at a symposium, “Exonerating the Innocent: Pre-Trial Innocent Procedures,” on Friday, November 5, from 8:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at the Law School, located at 185 West Broadway.

“One of our generation’s greatest social challenges is finding a way to protect innocent people from criminal convictions and often years, decades, or a life of wrongful imprisonment,” said West Point Professor Tim Bakken, co-organizer of the symposium. “The symposium will offer perspectives on how the American adversarial system could be changed so that the innocent may establish innocence prior to their potential conviction and imprisonment. Conclusive exonerations through DNA testing of forensic evidence—testing that exists in relatively few cases—number in the hundreds, and it has been estimated that the number of innocent persons convicted during a 15-year period might be in the tens of thousands.”

The symposium will address a new approach for reducing the incidence of wrongful convictions: pre-trial innocence procedures and bureaus meant to limit the number of convictions of innocent people, especially the indigent, by allowing defendants to plead “innocent” and establish their innocence prior to or at trial. Panelists will discuss whether or how these procedures could spare innocent defendants from long prison terms in a system where establishing a person’s innocence following conviction is extremely difficult.

“Society also pays a terrible price when our constitutional rights yield no protection for innocent defendants,” said Lewis M. Steel ’63, who co-organized the symposium with Professor Bakken. Steel is Of Counsel at Outten & Golden LLP and has participated as a lead attorney in a series of highly publicized race-related murder trials and appeals, including the Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and John Artis case.

“The New York Law School Law Review is pleased to provide a forum for leading scholars and practitioners to address questions about the fairness and effectiveness of our criminal justice system and explore this bold proposal from a variety of theoretical and practical angles,” Marcey Grigsby ’06, Faculty Publisher of the Law Review, said. “We hope the symposium and its companion law review issue will influence attorneys, judges, scholars, policymakers, law students, the media, and others to think in new ways about how our justice system could more effectively achieve what is perhaps its most important goal: to convict the guilty while exonerating the innocent.”

The symposium will feature three panels: “Theoretical and Empirical Considerations of Pre-Trial Procedures,” “Approaches and Alternatives to Pre-Trial Procedures,” and “Political and Practice Considerations: Statutes and Demonstration Projects,” and a keynote address from The Honorable Theodore T. Jones, Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals and Co-Chair of New York’s Justice Task Force.

Panelists include legal scholars and practitioners:

• Steven Banks, Attorney in Chief of The Legal Aid Society.
• Leon Friedman, Professor of Law at Hofstra University School of Law. He has represented clients in important First Amendment cases dealing with the “Son of Sam” law and represented Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was freed after 19 years of imprisonment.
• Peter Neufeld, Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, Co-Founder of the Innocence Project.
• Lesley C. Risinger, Seton Hall University School of Law, represented Fernando Bermudez, a wrongfully accused man who was freed after 18 years in prison.
• Mike Ware, Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. He is the Special Fields Bureau Chief, responsible for the Conviction Integrity Division, which examines possible innocence cases, and recently helped free a wrongly convicted man, Stephen Brodie.

For a full list of panelists, visit www.nyls.edu/innocence.

Members of the media may RSVP to LaToya Jordan at latoya.jordan@nyls.edu or 212.431.2191. Five CLE credits will be available for $50. For more information about the symposium, visit www.nyls.edu/innocence.

About New York Law School
Founded in 1891, New York Law School is an independent law school located in lower Manhattan near the city’s centers of law, government, and finance. New York Law School’s renowned faculty of prolific scholars has built the School’s strength in such areas as constitutional law, civil and human rights, labor and employment law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and a number of interdisciplinary fields. The School is noted for its nine academic centers: Center on Business Law & Policy, Center on Financial Services Law, Center for International Law, Center for New York City Law, Center for Professional Values and Practice, Center for Real Estate Studies, Diane Abbey Law Center for Children and Families, Institute for Information Law & Policy, and Justice Action Center. New York Law School has more than 13,000 graduates and enrolls some 1,500 students in its full- and part-time J.D. program and its four advanced degree programs in financial services law, real estate, tax, and mental disability law studies. www.nyls.edu

# # #

Please join the Law Review and Moot Court Association for an

ALUMNI NETWORKING BREAKFAST WITH THE CLASS OF 2012

Connect with the Law Review and Moot Court’s graduating students and alumni.

Discuss your practice area, job search advice, and becoming an attorney.

When: 8am-9:30am on Thursday, March 1, 2012

Where: New York Law School, 2nd Floor Events Center

185 West Broadway, New York City

Please RSVP by February 27:

Alumni: register  here

Students: register here

A continental breakfast will be served.

Don’t forget your business cards.

Sponsored by the New York Law School Law Review and Moot Court Association, with support from the Office of Professional Development and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations

Follow the New York Law School Law Review at  

Thursday, April 12, 2012 at New York Law School

This symposium examined the U.S. Supreme Court with a particular focus on the relationship between U.S. Presidents and Chief Justices at critical times in American history. The event also celebrated the publication of FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal by award-winning author and Supreme Court historian James F. Simon. The panels were followed by a reception and book signing. This symposium was held in honor of Dean Emeritus James F. Simon as part of New York Law School’s 2012 Faculty/Student Presentation Day.

These themes reflect Professor Simon’s contributions to Supreme Court scholarship both as a journalist covering the Court for Time magazine and as a prolific author. His forthcoming book will be the latest in his series of books that have examined the relationship of a president and chief justice at a critical moment in history. Professor Simon’s other books include Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States, which Joseph J. Ellis called “a major contribution,” and The Center Holds: The Power Struggle Inside the Rehnquist Court. He has received numerous awards and honors, including The New York Times “Notable Book,” a Certificate of Merit and Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and a Scribes Book Award from the American Society of Writers.

Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in the New York Law School Law Review.  To pre-order a copy of the issue, click here.