Brooklyn DA Releases Findings Of Wrongful Conviction Report

BROOKLYN, NY – Brooklyn's District Attorney has published the findings of a report analyzing 20 cases that led to the exoneration of 25 people, the first report of its kind to be conducted in partnership with a prosecutor's office.

The report, 426 Years: An Examination of 25 Wrongful Convictions in Brooklyn, New York, is intended to provide transparency, underscore some of the common factors that led to wrongful convictions and avoid miscarriages of justice in the future.

“I am very proud of Brooklyn’s Conviction Review Unit and the commitment to justice it represents," District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a prepared statement. "With this Report, we hope to share the methods, analyses and findings of the CRU with others around the country who are engaged in this critical work, and with the public at large. Wrongful convictions devastate lives – each one of the 25 cases in this Report is its own tragedy – and strike at the heart of our criminal justice system."

The report discusses multiple factors of wrongful convictions, including:

• False or unreliable confessions
• Eyewitness misidentifications
• Significant witness credibility issues
• Nondisclosure of favorable evidence
• Police conduct
• Prosecutor conduct
• Defense conduct
• New evidence, witness interviews and expert consultations

Most of the cases that were examined in the report pertain to crimes that took place in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a news release from the District Attorney's office. The oldest case was from 1963 and the most recent case was from 2011. All but one of the exonerees are people of color, according to the release.

The report does not directly address racial bias, because "it is focused on factual findings in each particular case and not on structural or underlying reasons for injustice," according to the release.

The report was published together with the Innocence Project and the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP.