Prosecutors in Brooklyn are looking to toss out 378 criminal convictions — the majority of which are low-level drug and traffic offenses dating as far back as 1999 — because they were worked by 13 New York Police Department officers later convicted of crimes relating to their work.
Eric Gonzalez, Brooklyn's district attorney, has asked a state judge to vacate the first 15 convictions, all of which are felonies and several which resulted in prison time, per a report in The New York Times. His office will seek the vacating of the remaining cases over the next several weeks.
“These convictions continue to hang around people and impact them in all kinds of ways,” Mr. Gonzalez told the Times. “Had we known about these officers, we would never have brought these cases.”
Convictions can cause significant harm to an individual's ability to access employment and housing, as Legal Aid Society supervising attorney Elizabeth Felber told the Times. She said that convictions can result in loss of public housing options, difficulty finding employment and deportation for individuals whose legal residency in the US is not solidified.
The case review — and subsequent move for dismissals — began last year and was sparked by a probe into the cases of Joseph Franco, a former narcotics detective who was charged with perjury and other offenses connected to his undercover work. The detective was fired and is awaiting trial in Manhattan.
In 2021, Mr Gonzalez asked the court to toss out 90 convictions Mr Franco helped bring to court.
Several defense attorneys and civil rights organisations sent letters to the city's district sttorneys last spring calling into question convictions assisted by the work of 20 NYPD police officers who were convicted of crimes relating to their work.
That letter asked for a review of and potential erasure of convictions in which those officers were involved. Around 150 cases were dismissed as a result of that review.
The 13 officers in question in the Brooklyn review are no longer working on the police force.
The cases slated for dismissal in the Brooklyn review include 331 misdemeanour convictions and 47 felonies. Approximately half involve four officers who were connected to a corruption scandal focused on the NYPD's narcotics department. Officers involved were found to have planted evidence, doctored records, and provided drugs to criminal informants.
One of the officers involved in that scandal, Jerry Bowens, was charged and pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend. He is facing a minimum prison sentence of 37 years, and was one of the central officers involved in the cases being reviewed in Brooklyn.
