NewsLI.com reports on a recent public forum in the Empire State, "Senator Schneiderman, Innocence Project and Others Champion Mandatory Recording of Interrogations."
On Friday, April 11, State Senators Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan/Bronx), Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn), John Sabini (D-Queens), John Sampson (D-Brooklyn), Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) and Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan), Assemblymember Charles Lavine (D-Glen Cove), and leading criminal justice advocates took part in a public forum to address wrongful convictions and Mandatory Electronic Recording of Interrogations.
At the forum, expert testimony was presented by Barry Scheck of The Innocence Project, which is affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Nicholas A. Gravante, the attorney who represented Frank Esposito in People v. Esposito, the representatives for Long Island native Martin Tankleff, who was present at the forum, Thomas P. Sullivan, a former United States attorney and national expert on recording custodial interrogations, Jeffrey Szabo, Deputy County Executive and Chief of Staff to Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, and Jeffrey Deskovic, who was exonerated in 2006 after serving 15 years in prison for a murder and sexual assault that he did not commit.
Schneiderman, who chairs the New York State Senate Democratic Task Force on Criminal Justice Reform and also serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Codes Committee as well as a Commissioner on the New York State Commission on Sentencing Reform, has worked tirelessly to ensure that the guilty are punished and innocent persons are safeguarded. Testimony from today’s forum will be used to develop legislation that ensures the public’s trust in New York’s criminal justice system.
”A grave injustice is committed when we create victims out of innocent people because inefficient, unreliable and out of date models of interrogation continue to be used,” Schneiderman said. “Too often, criminal cases have been decided on little more than he-said/she-said. We need mandatory electronic recording so that justice is carried out with precision, so that detectives can do their work knowing their efforts are well-documented, and with no lingering question about whether the right person is off the streets.”
Thomas Sullivan co-chaired the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment and continues to work to implement several of the recommended reforms nationally; particularly the electronic recording of custodial interrogations and improvements in eyewitness identification procedures.
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