Advocates call on gov to sign wrongful convictions bill into law

Governor Kathy Hochul has until the close of Friday to either sign or veto the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act into law. File photo by Darren McGee/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

By Jacob Kaye

New Yorkers who claim to have been wrongly convicted may have to wait at least another year before new avenues for them to challenge their convictions open up.

Governor Kathy Hochul has until the close of Friday to sign into law or veto the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act, a piece of legislation from a Queens lawmaker that would ​create several new pathways for wrongfully convicted New Yorkers to formally clear their name of their conviction in New York State.

Originally introduced by Queens State Assemblymember Jeff Aubry, the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act was passed by the state legislature at the close of its legislative session earlier this year.

Despite the support of lawmakers, the bill has sat unsigned on the governor’s desk and may be rejected should the governor take action before the end of the week.

Advocates rallied outside of the governor’s Manhattan office on Thursday morning to demand Hochul sign the bill into law.

“It's just simple justice, it's common sense,” Jeffrey Deskovic, who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the rape and murder of a classmate in the 1980s, said at the rally. “Governor Hochul, sign the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act.”

A spokesperson for Hochul said that the “governor is reviewing the legislation.”

If passed into law, the bill would remedy what advocates say are limited opportunities to challenge convictions in New York, the state with the third-most wrongful convictions in the country – within New York, no other county has more wrongful convictions than Queens but Brooklyn.

“Having a way in which to advance investigations into wrongful convictions makes sense fiscally and for the purposes of respect for the law,” Aubry, who recently announced that he’d end his 30-year career in the Assembly when his current term is completed at the end of 2024, told the Eagle on Thursday. “My hope is that the governor will see it that way.”

The bill would be a particular help to New Yorkers who say they were wrongfully convicted after being coerced into pleading guilty to the crimes they were accused of.

Currently, a convicted New Yorker who pleaded guilty can only file a claim of innocence if new DNA evidence is recovered. The bill would make it so that a guilty plea would not negate a person’s ability to make innocence claims where there is credible, new, non-DNA evidence of wrongful conviction.

The legislation would also provide a right to post-conviction discovery and establish a right to counsel for those with wrongful conviction claims.

Only five states, including New York, do not have a law on their books that establishes a right to legal representation for those making a wrongful conviction claim.

While the legislation would create new pathways for incarcerated New Yorkers to work their way toward release, it would also allow New Yorkers who have long been released from prison to clear their names and potentially rid themselves of the stigmas associated with a past conviction.

Speaking with the Eagle in June 2022, Roger Clark, who was formerly incarcerated for a charge he said he was wrongfully convicted of, said his inability to clear his name has prevented him from moving forward with his life.

“To this day, I can’t get that conviction off of my record,” Clark told the Eagle. “That is why it's so important, because we don't want innocent individuals who should not have a conviction on their record to have one.”

While there may be other paths toward overturning wrongful convictions, including clemency, Clark said it’s important the criminal justice system formally recognize the mistakes and overturn the convictions.

“Doing it through the courts, it’s like now the court recognizes that you did not commit the crime, and that you actually are innocent,” Clark said.

The Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act has never gotten further along in the legislative process than it currently has.

The bill was first introduced during the 2019-2020 legislative session, and then again in the 2021-2022 session, never making it out of committee in the Senate. That year, however, it was passed by the Assembly.

The bill was introduced again this year and passed by both houses in Albany.

The legislation has received pushback primarily from district attorneys, who claim that the bill will open the state up to endless challenges from convicted New Yorkers.

The office of Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, whose opened up a Conviction Integrity Unit shortly after the start of her first term in office, did not respond to request for comment on the bill when asked by the Eagle on Thursday.

But Aubry said that should the bill be signed into law, limits will remain on who and who can’t challenge a conviction.

Assemblymember Jeff Aubry’s Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act will either be signed into law or vetoed by the governor on Friday. File photo via Aubry’s office

“The bill does not allow unlimited challenges,” Aubry said. “Some district attorneys oppose it, I think, because they have Conviction Integrity Units already established but we have 62 district attorneys across the state and I would suggest to you that very few have Conviction Integrity Units.”

The longtime lawmaker who played a key role in eliminating the state’s Rockefeller drug laws, which established lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug charges, said that opposition to the bill from DAs may also just have to do with pride.

“Nobody likes to be wrong,” he said. “Particularly when it comes to taking away somebody's liberty for as long as we have taken away the liberty of some individuals who are incarcerated.”