New York's opportunity to protect the wrongfully convicted

In 1989, five teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park, largely based on false confessions. Police only videotaped the confessions, and not the preceding hours of coercive questioning, so the judge and jury were not able to get the full picture of what occurred behind closed doors. Had police been required to record the entire interrogation, the young men would not have been wrongfully convicted, and the real assailant, Matias Reyes, may have been detected sooner and prevented from attacking other women.

Today 224 wrongful convictions have been overturned in New York. Thirty of these cases were proven with DNA evidence, and eyewitness misidentification or false confession played a role in all of them. Out of the 30 DNA exonerations in New York, the real perpetrators were subsequently convicted of a total of 10 violent crimes, including five murders and three rapes. 

Yet 28 years after the Central Park Five case, New York still does not require that interrogations be recorded. It also does not require the use of evidence-based practices to prevent eyewitness misidentification. While many other states, including our neighbors in New Jersey and Connecticut, have enacted these reforms, our state lags behind.

For over a decade, the Innocence Project has worked alongside champions like Assemblyman Joseph Lentol to put these wrongful conviction protections in place. We have gotten close to success before. Four years ago, Assemblyman Lentol and state Sen. Michael Nozzolio (R-Seneca Falls) authored legislation that was supported by the Assembly, Senate and a range of criminal justice stakeholders. This compromise bill exemplified how these critical issues cross party lines, but somehow the opportunity got lost among other priorities in the Legislature.  

Now we have another chance to prevent wrongful convictions in New York. The governor, Senate and Assembly have all included mandatory recording of interrogations and eyewitness identification reform in their budget proposals. 

Why not come together and get it done? We know we can do this. We have done it before. Let’s finally do the sensible and ethically sound thing and include these reforms this year’s budget. 

We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In the future, we can amend the law and improve upon it by requiring taping in more crime categories, as has happened in many of the states where similar legislation has passed. But we can’t improve upon something that does not exist. 

Every year that our state continues not to act on these reforms is another year that more innocent New Yorkers are wrongfully convicted while the real assailants remain free to harm others. The budget is a significant opportunity to come together and make positive and valuable change. Let’s not squander it.

Barry Scheck is co-founder of the Innocence Project.