New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations, with support from the Fund, dug into conviction integrity units across New York State that were created to re-examine criminal convictions that District Attorneys’ offices may have gotten wrong. The team’s reporting found that these units have fallen short of their promise. Nearly half of them have yet to support a single exoneration. Interviews with dozens of people and a review of hundreds of pages of government records reveal a system operating almost entirely in secret, with no outside oversight. The investigation found that conviction integrity units did not support the claims of 14 defendants whose convictions were later overturned by the courts. Most units across the state answer solely to the DAs who created them, and in more than 40 percent of the cases analyzed, the prosecutor who handled the original criminal case was still working at the DA’s office, requiring unit staff to re-examine their colleague’s past conduct.
Grantees find that ‘conviction integrity units’ designed to find wrongful convictions in New York State are falling short of their promise
