One of the greater political mysteries to me in NYS has been the degree to which progressive reform of our criminial justice system has been elusive. Other than a very modest improvement in the bizzarre Rockefeller Drug laws (which mandate very long incarceration terms for narcotics offenders) Criminal Justice reform in NYS has been a political non-starter.
I listened, therefore with great interest to the remarks made by Dallas (Texas) District Attornery Craig Watkins, Monday morning. He laid out his progressive law enforcement agenda to a packed Drum Major Institute forum. Those proposals had gotten him elected in red-state Texas over a knee-jerk tough on crime GOP candidate. He advocates and thinks he's making progress on issues like proper evidence gathering and preservation, trials that are fair for defendants, review of past cases to correct wrongful or wrong convictions. (DMI has posted an account of that meeting at their DMI Blog . My post is not a full account of that interesting event. If you want to know more, go there.) If Watkins can do this in Dallas, why are we not doing similar work in NY?
Well, Senator Eric Schneiderman, the progressive Democrat from the UWS of Manhattan and Riverdale, attributed the lack of progress this past term to our governor and to the GOP majority in the State Senate. While the Gov's program bill was not good, the Assembly bills which, sponsored by Assembly Member Joseph Lentol, passed. (As it happens these were all Lentol bills in only one sense: as chair of the Assembly Codes Committee, he greenlighted them. One of the bills, on preservation of DNA evidence, is his. Read it here here . Others were sponsored by other assembly members. I'll round them up later.
Everybody, he said, predicted a deal could be reached until the Governor and Mr. Bruno decided to stop working together. Others including Lentol confirmed the suggestion that -- the key thing standing between substantial reform (in their view the Lentol bill) and improved law is a Democratic Majority in the NY State Senate. (Myself, I am not so sure. I suspect that one reason that Democrats made only a half-hearted attempt in 2006 to capture control of the State Senate, is that the need a fall guy. They need Joe Bruno to kick around some more. Will 2008 be different?
The The Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School (led by Panelist Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld) has just issued a really smart, must-read report on the failings of law enforcement and criminal justice in NYS . We might all do well to read more about Mr. Lentol's bills. Full disclosure: I had never heard about them or the fight to pass them before today. I pay a moderate amount of attention to criminal justice issues. If I hadn't heard, I will bet dollars to doughnuts that no one else has either. Indeed, Assembly Member Lentol, who was sitting accross the table from me, was visibly surprised when Westchester DA Janet DiFiore offered to work with him -- a sign to me that even the most modest outreach had not been done. I will post about it soon.
