Valentino Dixon freed after serving 27 years on wrongful conviction
Check out this well-written piece in Golf Digest on the exoneration of ETKS client Valentino...
read moreAssociate Paul Meabon teams with Assistant Public Defender Josh Stubbe to present CLE on justification
The Monroe County Public Defender’s Office will be hosting a CLE on Friday, September 7, 2018 on the defense of justification. Joshua Stubbe (Monroe County Public Defender’s Office) and Paul Meabon (Easton Thompson Kasperek Shiffrin) will provide a general overview of the justification statute, help differentiate between lethal and non-lethal force and analyze facts courts rely on to determine the initial aggressor. Participants will receive 2.0 credit hours in the areas of skills (both...
read moreChallenging the assumption that an innocent person would not plead guilty
I recently challenged on appeal the validity of my client’s guilty plea based on my client’s questionable mental capacity and ability to understand the plea bargaining process. Ignoring the import of my client’s diminished capacity, the prosecutor on appeal (in typical fashion) argued that “one could assume” my client would not have “readily” admitted to the offense in open court if he had not committed it. It is remarkable that this argument is still...
read morePeople v Catu does not apply retroactively
Early last week the Court of Appeals reversed a decision of the First Department which held that the rule of law announced in People v Catu applies retroactively to pre-Catu convictions (People v Smith, 132 AD3d 511 [1st Dept 2015]) — a decision I had labeled a “huge success for the criminal defense bar” in an October blog post. In People v Catu, the New York Court of Appeals held that the court must advise a defendant...
read morePeople v Smith, from the Court of Appeals yesterday
by Jill Paperno, First Assistant Public Defender and author of Representing the Accused: A Practical Guide to Criminal Defense Among some of yesterday’s disappointing Court of Appeals decisions there is one that can be useful to us – People v. Smith, et. al. The Court recognized that police officers may be cross-examined about their tortious conduct in other situations, as described below. Sadly, although the Court recognized error on the part of the trial...
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