Add §§440.00 & 440.11, amd §§440.10, 440.20, 440.30 & 450.10, rpld §450.10 sub 5, CP L
Relates to motions to vacate judgment; authorizes filing motions to vacate judgment due to a change in law; authorizes motions to vacate judgment to be filed at any time after entry of a judgment obtained at trial or by plea; relates to the requirements of discovery.
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A2878
SPONSOR: Aubry TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the criminal procedure law, in relation to motions to
vacate judgment; and to repeal certain provisions of such law relating
thereto
SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:
Section 1 adds a new section 440.11 to the criminal procedure law.
Section 2 amends section 440.10 of the criminal procedure law.
Section 3 amends section 440.20 of the criminal procedure law.
Section 4 amends section 440.30 of the criminal procedure law.
Section 5 amends section 450.10 of the criminal procedure law.
Section 6 repeals subdivision 5 of section 450.10 of the criminal proce-
dure law.
Section 7 creates a severability clause.
Section 8 sets the effective date.
JUSTIFICATION:
New York State ranks third in the nation in numbers of wrongful
convictions. Our state also has an extremely high rate of plea bargain-
ing - 98 percent of felony cases in our state resolve by plea agree-
ments, not trial. Yet people who plead guilty have the lowest rates of
exonerations because there are so many structural barriers to exonera-
tion after a guilty plea. This is particularly true in New York, where
the Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 in People v. Tiger that people who
plead guilty cannot challenge their convictions on the grounds of actual
innocence unless they have DNA evidence to support their claim.
This bill amends article 440 of the criminal procedure law, which
governs post-judgment motions, to provide people previously convicted of
crimes the opportunity for meaningful review to ensure redress for
wrongful convictions, including in cases where the person pled guilty.
For decades New Yorkers have felt the pressure to plead guilty, even to
crimes they did not commit, because bail was set in their case in
amounts they could not afford or because the pre-trial process lasted so
long that after waiting months or years for the case to resolve they
could wait no longer. Under the state's previous criminal discovery law,
the now-repealed criminal procedure law article 240, people were not
entitled to see the basic evidence in their case, including witness
statements and police reports, until trial began. Countless number of
people pled guilty because of the pressure to plead even in cases where
the evidence may not have supported a guilty plea or they were, in fact,
innocent.
Significantly, this bill increases protections for people who are actu-
ally innocent, including ensuring that they are permitted under law to
submit various types of evidence of their innocence to the court and
requiring courts to order hearings in those cases with colorable claims
of actual innocence. Post-conviction review of claims will be permitted
in cases that went to trial or whose case resolved in a plea. The bill
also removes procedural bars for people to challenge convictions based
on false or faulty evidence. In short, if there is evidence of a
person's innocence, courts will now have a legal mechanism to review the
case and vacate the conviction where appropriate.
In 2019 the New York State legislature took bold steps to reform our
criminal discovery, bail and speedy trial laws to ensure more fairness
in the pretrial process and right decades of injustice. But hundreds of
thousands of New Yorkers obtained criminal records in the years prior to
that reform as a result of the unfair, illegal, unconstitutional and
coercive processes that blighted our criminal punishment system. Most of
these people are low-income people of color. The bill thus extends new
due process protections to applicants for post-conviction relief,
including the right to access complete discovery of both the prosecution
and defense counsel files and access to, including re-testing of, phys-
ical evidence. The reform also allows applicants for post-conviction
relief to request defense counsel and requires the court to appoint
counsel in cases where the person requesting relief requests counsel, is
indigent, or would otherwise qualify for free representation at the
trial-level. The bill also expands protections for people exposed to
significant collateral consequences from their convictions.
The bill brings New York law in line with five other states and the
District of Columbia that have mechanisms for people to clear old
convictions for crimes that have subsequently been decriminalized. For
example, in 2019, the New York State legislature decriminalized the
possession of so-called gravity knives, which were in most cases utility
knives that people legally purchased at stores like Home Depot. Thou-
sands of people were arrested and prosecuted for the possession of these
tools under a law that federal courts found to be unconstitutionally
vague. This bill provides a remedy for people convicted under laws that
are subsequently decriminalized or found to be unconstitutional to peti-
tion to vacate the conviction.
Finally, throughout the bill, the term defendant is replaced with appli-
cant. This is an effort to humanize the people seeking redress under
criminal procedure law article 440. For more details on the importance
of using people-first language, visit
http://prisonstudiesproject.org/language/.
New York State must act to right past wrongs and allow people wrongfully
or improperly convicted in previous decades to clear their names and
their records. This requires a fundamental overhaul of our state's post-
judgment motion law, article 440 of the criminal procedure law.
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2021 - 2022: A98-A
2019 - 2020: A9157
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
TBD
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately
