Editor’s Note – BBN’s pages are dedicated to clarifying the significant and determining role local district attorneys have in the lives of defendants, their families and the communities they serve. These public systems weigh disproportionately on Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged communities. Sharon Toomer is the publisher of BBN and author of this series. The following analysis is a culmination of her observations, reporting and experiences. Sharon’s focus here is on accountability and the elephant in the room: The Guardians of the Public Trust. Who are they and are they in a position to rein in and hold prosecutors accountable? Because of its size, scope and municipal structure, New York City offers a landscape and nationwide model for this important analysis.
Story Highlights:
– NY State ranks second to Republican and conservative leaning Texas on the list of states with most exonerations. NYC DA’s lead the state in most exonerations that took place in 2014.
– NYC District Attorneys Offices are public-city agencies, yet they operate as autonomous entities, without oversight.
– For decades, city and state officials have known NYC’s district attorneys require oversight. Still, no oversight.
– Who are the guardians of public trust at the city, state and federal level to check and balance NYC’s district attorneys offices. What authorities are in positions to hold District Attorneys accountable?
– Sidebar Flashback: Precedence and Irony.
– NYC district attorneys offices are broken, dysfunctional systems. A look under the hood, by guardians of public trust, is overdue, essential.
I have worked for two administrations in the Kings County District Attorneys Office [Brooklyn].
My first stint in the office, in the early 2000s, was also my first foray into the criminal justice system and the opaque universe of local prosecutors. Until then, I only knew of the criminal justice system through the lens of family members and friends caught up in its overpowering density. My second time in the office came more than one decade later, in 2014. In both instances, I had broad access to the human and systemic mechanisms that drive the third largest (by population served) prosecutorial agency in the nation.
Between 2012 and 2013, I researched the role of district attorneys and produced a series of reports for BBN and for a political reporting fellowship. Before and during this time, there was a cascade of press reports exposing accounts of wrongfully prosecuted and imprisoned defendants as well as reports of prosecutorial misconduct and abuse of power. Many of those reported failures were directly linked to the Brooklyn DA’s office, while others occurred throughout the United States.
Most of the victims of this failed element of the criminal justice system are Black, Latino and/or economically disadvantaged men and women.
Last year, I sat down for an insightful conversation with a man who had spent 20 years of his life fighting for his freedom and the restoration of his good family name. His is a story of biblical proportion. It is an epic tragedy, not of his making, but of a wicked system of wayward and unchecked authority. He spent 16 years in a maximum security correctional facility for a crime he did not commit, and another four years, after his exoneration, in a fierce battle to call to account the very system guilty of taking away much of his life. It is an unfathomable account of a life interrupted and damaged by a callous system of unchecked prosecutors.
His story is not an aberration. The University of Michigan Law School’s National Registry of Exonerations calculates 1,567 nationwide exonerations, since 1989.
Prosecutorial systems and practice patterns, that yield unimaginable outcomes, are surefire signs of a broken, dysfunctional and unchecked public system. At the core of every failure in this system is a human life. The magnitude of destruction inflicted on an entire family and community is catastrophic.
One wrongfully prosecuted and imprisoned defendant is a contributing and essential part to a family unit and community. When it fails, the system robs whole families and a greater community.
For all of its democratic [party] ideals and progressive talk, NY State ranks second to Republican and conservative leaning Texas on the list of states with most exonerations.
With all of that said, I arrive at this pressing question: Where are New York’s guardians of public trust in holding accountable and reining in prosecutors? Why are they conspicuously absent while a major public institution under their authority produces severe, life-altering results?
NYC district attorneys offices – A peculiar city agency
In total, New York State has 62 District Attorneys Offices. Out of 2,300 District Attorneys Offices across the country, NYC’s five district attorneys comprise the largest jurisdiction of prosecutors in the country.
In 2014, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, NYC district attorneys offices prosecuted 14 out the state’s 17 exonerations and these are the cases we know about. There is no telling how many men and women languish in prison or have already died as a result of failed prosecution.
Unlike any other element in the city’s criminal justice system, district attorneys serve in three capacities: They are prosecutors, law enforcement agents and elected officials. Within the city’s municipal landscape, they operate as a seemingly autonomous agency. In that way the five district attorneys offices evoke the era of NY’s controversial “power broker” Robert Moses, who, as a civil servant, conducted city and state affairs with unchecked authority.
That unparalleled autonomy in the municipal landscape and the mixing of prosecution, law enforcement and a highly charged political office requires fixed and responsive guardianship.
Alarm sounded decades ago, and again today
For at least 40 years, New York City and State guardians of public trust have known its District Attorneys Offices required careful oversight.
In 1970, the Knapp Commission was formed to investigate widespread corruption within the New York City Police Department. In its final report, the commission recommended oversight of district attorneys offices and citywide agencies.
The Knapp Commission held public hearings on widespread corruption in the New York City Police Department.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert extensively covered and exposed the city’s problematic criminal justice system, including misconduct and abuse of power in the Brooklyn DA’s office.
In 2003, thirteen years after being prosecuted by the Manhattan DA’s office for a crime they did not commit, five defendants in the high profile Central Park Jogger case were released from prison.
For decades, advocacy groups, the defense bar, scholars, members of the judicial bench and the press have continued to sound the alarm and expose the epidemic of prosecutorial failures and misconduct.
Still, with all of this knowledge, the guardians of public trust remain elusive, passive and conspicuously absent, while an element of the criminal justice system screams for intervention and oversight.
Who are the guardians of public trust?
NYC’s district attorneys offices are bona fide public institutions and city agencies. No debate.
Though they are separate elected offices, the five district attorneys (one per borough) are part of the same criminal justice system and municipal landscape. Brooklyn has earned much of the bad press for wrongful convictions and prosecutorial misconduct, but it stands to reason that scrutiny and oversight is essential for all.
Under the state and city’s government structure, the Governor, State Attorneys General, Mayor, Comptroller and City Council are in positions of authority to oversee all, or aspects of, district attorneys offices.
The 1972 the Knapp Commission Report specified that the Governor and Attorneys General appoint a Special Deputy Attorney General to oversee all elements of the criminal justice system, including district attorney offices. Governors have executive authority and Attorneys Generals have investigatory power over elected officials.
Precedence and irony: In 1985, Gov Mario Cuomo, father of NY’s current Governor Andrew Cuomo, appointed Charles Hynes Special State Prosecutor for the NYC criminal justice system. 1n 1989, Hynes successfully campaigned to become Brooklyn’s District Attorney. He served in that role for six terms. In 2013, a political newcomer, Kenneth Thompson, unseated him. Hynes, in his 23 years as Brooklyn’s District Attorney, presided over a city agency that produced more than one hundred cases currently under review by Thompson for possible wrongful prosecutions. Since January 2014, twelve imprisoned defendants have been exonerated.
Mario Cuomo (l), Gov of NY, 1983–1994. Charles Hynes (r) (Images via Headlines America and NY Daily News)
In the 2013 Brooklyn District Attorney’s race to unseat Charles Hynes, then-candidate Kenneth Thompson wrote a letter to Andrew Cuomo requesting that he use his authority as Governor to appoint the attorney general or special prosecutor to review possible wrongful conviction cases that stemmed from Hynes’ leadership.
At the city level, the Mayor is well within his power to rein in district attorneys. It was Mayor John Lindsay, for instance, who appointed the Knapp Commission.
Recently, in response to a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the city over the reprehensible conditions and systemic failures at the Rikers Island Correctional Facility, the Mayor [Bill de Blasio] established a task force to study the conditions and systems at the city’s jails. Even though district attorneys are elected officials, the mayor can check the agency that district attorneys operate under.
Also under the Mayor’s supervision are the Office of Criminal Justice, and his commissioners in the Department of Investigations and Office of Management and Budget. They, too, can be deployed to thoroughly investigate and inspect operations, systems and management in district attorneys offices. If there is a conflict of interest with these agencies conducting investigations of district attorneys offices, an independent group can be formed or contracted by the city.
The city’s elected Comptroller is also positioned to order financial and management audits that go deep. Given the millions of dollars the city has shelled out in civil lawsuits over prosecutorial failures, a top-down, substantive financial and management audit of the city’s district attorneys offices is in the public’s interest. Again, if there is a conflict of interest or the Comptroller’s office is not up for that level of audit, an external auditing firm can be contracted. The cost, in comparison to the settlements paid out, would be substantially less.
But, the grandfather of all guardians is the U.S. Department of Justice. In the same way the USDOJ investigates, files lawsuits and enters into consent decrees with local law enforcement, they can do the same with local prosecutors [law enforcement agencies].
For example, the USDOJ recently released a report on its thorough investigation of the Ferguson Missouri Police Department. What stops the USDOJ from expanding that investigation into Ferguson PD’s law enforcement partner, the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office, whose office is responsible for prosecuting defendants arrested by Ferguson police officers?
“The DOJ’s Department of Civil Rights Division has, at its disposal, a section that allows them to criminally prosecute people who are violating the civil rights of individuals under the state law,” said Cynthia Jones, Associate Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law, in a 2013 BBN interview.
A broken, dysfunctional system – a look under the hood is overdue, essential
The system of prosecution in NYC is, and has been for some time, dysfunctional, broken and in crisis. Whether it is a veteran or newly elected district attorneys office; intervention, oversight and accountability are essential and in the public’s best interest. If one part of a system has produced a pattern of failure, it is feasible that other parts of the same system have also produced failures that are unknown.
At every level, the guardians of public trust have inexplicably abstained, or looked the other way, when clear evidence shows their authority is needed to mind the prosecutorial coop.
Even more confounding is that guardians of the public trust either leave it up to the sickly system and culture of prosecution to self-police and self-reform, or wait until a new district attorney is elected. Effectively, they are complicit and enabling factors in the catastrophic life outcomes visited on defendants, families and communities as a result of prosecutorial failures.
In this video clip, Sharrif Wilson and Antonio Yarbough talk about being released from prison after 21 years. Wilson died in January 2015. He was 15-years-old when he went to prison for a murder he did not commit.
It is inconceivable, poor public policy and negligent stewardship that NY’s guardians of public trust have not formed an independent commission to study a system under their authority that has produced horrendous outcomes for the people and communities they serve. Isn’t there even a base curiosity about the innerworkings, operations, management, culture, worst practices in this system that causes devastating results to human life?
For the sake of integrity and quality assurance, NY’s guardians of public trust should bother to look deep under the hood of district attorneys offices. An independent review of financial books, operations, systems and management is in the public’s best interest.
Until they demonstrate the political will and responsible stewardship to do what is right and necessary, the guardians of public trust are on the accountability hook for all that has and will continue to go wrong in prosecution.
Sharon Toomer @sdtoomer
Edited by Maureen Clavel
2015 copyright BlackandBrownNews.com (BBN)
