NEW YORK — One of the country’s most aggressive prosecutor’s offices is launching a new conviction integrity committee that could aid innocent people serving time for crimes they didn’t commit.
Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the new committee would proactively work to correct wrongful convictions in cases brought by its office and in other state and federal jurisdictions.
“Our solemn obligation as prosecutors to protect the community and seek justice for victims of crimes requires that we take every step to ensure that the guilty are held responsible, and the innocent are set free,” said Williams.
Williams said if the committee’s comprehensive review yields “but one” remedy of an unjust conviction or results in one innocent person’s freedom, he’ll consider it “a successful endeavor to further the cause of justice for all.”
The committee is the first of its kind within the SDNY and follows one created in Washington, D.C.
It will act as a resource for people in other jurisdictions by providing access to evidence in SDNY cases that could support their wrongful conviction claims.
Investigators at the powerful prosecutor’s office amass troves of evidence in wide-ranging cases that rely heavily on testimony from cooperating witnesses.
The feds require somebody they flip to reveal all criminality they’ve witnessed in their lives, regardless of a connection to the underlying case. It’s not uncommon for investigators to learn about people who took the fall for a crime they didn’t commit during those lengthy sessions, according to people familiar with such outcomes.
In the kind of long-running, historical investigations typically handled by the SDNY, informants share a tremendous breadth of knowledge, often over the course of years.
When she headed the office’s violent and organized crimes unit, Margaret Garnett said she received 10 to 50 letters a year from state prisoners asking for access to SDNY’s bulging binders. They believed the massive evidence collection contained information that could clear their name.
The deputy U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, who was New York City’s top corruption watchdog before she returned to the office in late 2021, believes exonerating the innocent is as vital as convicting the guilty in pursuing criminal justice.
“Any prosecutor who’s in this business should be as concerned with ensuring that innocent people are set free as they are with ensuring that guilty people are held accountable,” Garnett told The News.
“All of it, to me, is part of our job.”
Many weaknesses in the legal system influence wrongful convictions, like misused forensic science, unreliable eyewitness testimony, and failures by prosecutors and law enforcement to follow up on leads.
Often, people admit to crimes they didn’t commit in exchange for significantly lower sentences than they risk receiving should they lose at trial.
Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders, which represents thousands of New Yorkers who can’t afford a lawyer, welcomed the initiative.
“We hope that the U.S. Attorney’s Office will look closely at convictions based on the testimony of law enforcement officers who later were found not to be reliable, just as the Kings County D.A.’s Office has done,” von Dornum said.
Jessica Roth, an SDNY alum, Cardozo Law School professor and co-director of the Jacob Burns Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law, said it was important that the prominent prosecutor’s office take the lead on righting wrongful convictions.
“The longstanding reputation of the Southern District of New York as one of the premiere offices at the DOJ puts it in a position to offer this model for other U.S. Attorneys offices,” said Roth.
“And if it is successful in the Southern District, hopefully it will be replicated in those offices.”
