On the morning of May 3, 2017, Suffolk County prosecutor Glenn Kurtzrock was preparing to call the lead detective in a murder case — his final witness — when the defense attorney noticed something odd. There was a two-year gap in the detective’s memo book.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses a federal court ruling blocking the Trump administration’s transfer of Biden-commuted death row inmates to a federal supermax prison, examining the constitutional and procedural issues surrounding that action.

Wrongful convictions are often defined by numbers: the number of lives upended, the number of years unjustly served, and the number of systemic failures that allowed such injustices to occur. Reduced to statistics, the personal stories of those wrongly convicted — marked by...

For defendants who can afford to hire private counsel, word of mouth matters a lot. The decision about who will represent them is one of the most consequential choices they will make in the entire criminal process, yet it must be made in a system that offers little meaningful...

New York City paid $117 million in 2025 to settle lawsuits involving accusations of police and prosecutorial misconduct, many for incidents that occurred decades ago, including a wrongful conviction in a 1987 murder. The amount was about half of the $206 million the city paid out...

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of justice, courts, and laws? For most people, it is a system designed to protect everyone equally. However, that is not the reality we live in today.

A bill that would revise Washington’s Wrongly Convicted Persons Act and streamline the compensation process for individuals who have been exonerated recently passed the House Committee on Appropriations.

Big Law partners and in-house counsel, take note: the rules governing attorney discipline are shifting fast under the current administration, prompting some intense online reaction. In a move that’s sparking fierce debate across social media channels, the Trump Justice Department has...

A San Francisco judge has found the elected Public Defender Mano Raju in contempt of court, setting the stage for a hearing on March 24 that could determine whether monetary sanctions will be imposed and, more broadly, how far courts can go in compelling defense attorneys to...

Nearly five years after New York set up a statewide watchdog to police prosecutors, the office has handed down just one public censure while hundreds of complaints sit unresolved. That contrast, a body with the power to investigate but limited capacity to do it, is fueling frustration from...

A recent report from the UC Berkeley School of Law Criminal Law and Justice Center concludes that prosecutor-initiated resentencing in Alameda County has reduced thousands of years of incarceration and...

New York State spent a record $450.6 million on prison healthcare in 2025, according to a February report by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, even as the aging incarcerated population driving these costs reoffends at some of the lowest rates in the system and continues...

MEDIA ALERT NEW YORK STATE SENATOR SALAZAR AND ASSEMBLYWOMAN WALKER JOIN WITH NEW YORK STATE EXONEREES TO PUSH LEGISLATION EXPANDING RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT INTERROGATIONS

Despite evidence that cashless bail doesn’t increase crime, several states are moving to restrict it. When most of downtown Houston has shut down for the night, bail bond row is still wide awake. At least 10 surety businesses dot the blocks surrounding the...

Mark your calendars—The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice's Fourth Annual Spring Gala is happening April 30, 2026, from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM at Westchester Manor!

The number of complaints against New York's state and local judges has been on the rise for several years, according to a new report by the state’s top judicial watchdog. There were 3,363 complaints filed against state, county and local judges in 2025, according to a report released Monday by...

A federal judge has declined to disturb a $3 million jury verdict against the city of Philadelphia and several police officers in a civil rights lawsuit stemming from a wrongful conviction, rejecting post-trial challenges from both sides and denying...

Manhattan, NY, February 27th, 2026 – The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice has filed a motion with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan seeking an Order authorizing the federal district court to consider...

The recent fatal shooting of Renee Good by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis has already prompted intense public debate, much of it unfolding before the relevant facts are fully known.

An extraordinary legal experiment is unfolding in Oklahoma, where a new state law, the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, passed in 2024, offers prisoners a chance at freedom. Under the law, a domestic-violence victim who is serving time can petition for a reduced sentence, which the law mandates if...

California’s criminal justice system looks different in a very tangible way compared to when Gov. Gavin Newsom took office seven years ago. It has fewer prisons thanks to a dramatic decline in the number of people the state is incarcerating. It’s directing more resources to rehabilitation programs.

Just weeks ago, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Good during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. At around 9am on Saturday, a Customs & Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretti.

2024 was something of a watershed for the use of clemency in capital cases. In November 2024, President Joe Biden issued a mass commutation of 37 federal death sentences. A month later, outgoing North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper granted clemency to 15 people on his state’s...

The latest impactful and emotionally charged documentary from director Dawn Porter (John Lewis: Good Trouble; Luther: Never Too Much) opens with author Ta-Nehisi Coates (also an executive producer) recounting his memories of...

U.S. Men's Hockey Team: Apologize and Skip Trump's State of the Union in Solidarity with the U.S. Women's Hockey Team!

A young man with the mind of a child was executed by a system that mistook compliance for guilt. Joe Arridy’s story exposes how justice can function perfectly on paper while failing catastrophically in practice.

Belva Lockwood’s interest in law and politics brought her from upstate New York to Washington, D.C., in 1866. Later that year, she opened her own seminary school for women and became part of a community of progressive women activists who participated in the temperance and suffrage movements.

Two Southern California residents who say they suffered traumatic brain injuries after being struck in the head and face by so-called “less-lethal” projectiles during protests against federal immigration raids have filed civil rights lawsuits against the City and County of Los Angeles, alleging...

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to make arrangements to allow some of the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador to return to the U.S. at the government's expense.

The SAVE Act would require all Americans to prove their citizenship with documentation unavailable to millions and upend the way every American citizen registers to vote. Quick summary:

Some former federal prosecutors say the discrepancies in how the Trump administration is describing protest behavior may create a credibility problem for current prosecutors.

After his first reggaetón track went viral on SoundCloud in 2016, Bad Bunny left his job as a supermarket bagger and stepped into public view. With eccentric haircuts, painted nails, skirts, and fluorescent glasses, he disrupted the hyper-masculinity that defined...

An Ontario County Court judge has dismissed a high‑profile gang‑assault case after finding that prosecutors failed for nearly a year to meet mandatory discovery obligations and were not ready for trial within the state’s statutory deadline.

A state judge on Friday overturned the double murder conviction of a Queens man who has been in prison for more than three decades, ruling prosecutors improperly withheld key evidence from his 1995 trial.

Amid a national uproar over the recent killing of a Minnesota man by immigration agents, the California Senate on Tuesday approved proposed legislation that would make it easier to sue law enforcement officials suspected of violating an individual’s constitutional rights.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald is coming under unwanted scrutiny in an election year in which she is running for Michigan Attorney General. Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press reports that the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission is investigating allegations that McDonald...

Proposed rule would strip prosecutors of ethical independence and place conflict decisions solely in the hands of the attorney general.

On criminal justice, there were notable omissions in the governor’s address. Her speech and accompanying policy book also didn’t include any proposals to reform state prisons. Last year was arguably the toughest for the prison system in decades.

In a split decision, a state appeals court has reversed assault and gun convictions because of a dubious plea colloquy.

After nearly three years of freedom shadowed by the looming threat of re-incarceration, Andre Brown is no longer facing the prospect of returning to prison to serve the remaining 17 years of a 40-year sentence, following a resentencing decision in Bronx Supreme Court that...

On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law, designating the third Monday in January a federal holiday in observance of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Florida’s record execution spree in 2025 drove a sharp national uptick: Executions nearly doubled nationwide from 2024.

Claudette Colvin, 86, passed away Tuesday while under hospice care in Texas. She played a pivotal role in ending racial segregation in America, and we honor her legacy of courage and sacrifice.

State Sen. Scott Wiener and immigration advocates on Wednesday called for new accountability mechanisms for federal law enforcement officers as SB 747, known as the No Kings Act, passed its first legislative test in the California Senate Judiciary Committee, following the fatal...

The final trial related to the death of Robert Brooks began Monday, with opening statements set to begin Tuesday. Brooks, a Greece resident, was killed inside Marcy State Correctional Facility a year ago.

A new impact brief from the State Bar of California’s Office of Access & Inclusion warns that budget cuts could undermine California’s legal aid infrastructure, threatening access to justice for millions of low- and middle-income residents.

More than three decades after one of the most infamous wrongful conviction cases in American history, the stories of the Exonerated Five continue to shape public understanding of injustice, resilience and reform.

Dear Friend of Justice, In these times in which trampling on justice and human rights is becoming the norm in Washington, our states, cities, places of education, healthcare, and work, please allow me to get straight to the point.

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced an agreement with the Legislature on the prison reform omnibus bill that would enact a series of ten transformational changes within state prisons and local jails.