Results tagged “thecourt”

After Scott Fappiano was freed last week, after being in falsely imprisoned for 21 years (he was mistakenly convicted of raping a police officer's wife in their Brooklyn home), more questions are being raised about the way police evidence is stored/a>. Thought Fappiano had requested a pair of sweatpants be tested for DNA evidence in 1989, the technology back then wasn't able to read the small sample - and then the pants and sample were basically lost until this year (they had been in the DNA testing company's storage all along). The Innocence Project, which took on Fappiano's case, said that the NYPD evidence collection and tracking systems need to be reformed; IP's Peter Neufeld told WABC 7, "Unfortunately it's a black hole. We've had less good fortune locating evidence in New York City than in the rural quarters of Mississippi and Alabama."

Meals served at Bronx and Brooklyn courthouses will be utensil-less. How come? Well, Newsday reports that a shiv made out of two plastic spoons was found in a holding cell! Now court officers are worried about the exact thing we thought: What about all the other jails in the city? The Court Officers Association says court officers should just keep track of them ("If ten prisoners get a fork, then you have to get ten forks back."), but that's not much reassurance. From Newsday:

The shiv found in a holding cell where prisoners cool their heels before or after their appearance in criminal court sparked an Police Department memo in July warning officers to be on the watch for an "improvised knife."

Continue reading "Finger Food for Prisoners at Courthouses"

The NY State Court of Appeals ruled that gay marriage is not allowed. The Court of Appeals heard a NYC case in which Judge Doris Ling-Cohan ruled that gay marriage was allowed. The city appealed, and the case made it way up to the highest court in the state. Here's the ruling (PDF) and here's some of what it says:

We hold that the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex. Whether such marriages should be recognized is a question to be addressed by the Legislature.

Continue reading "NY State Court of Appeals Rejects Gay Marriage"

A Big Gay Supreme Court Ruling
Gothamist on the Supreme Court's decision to strike down sodomy laws.