New York

Lights, Camera, Criminal Defense: Lawyers Pick Up Cameras to Help Clients

Published

2 years ago

June 24, 2023

Lights, Camera, Criminal Defense: Lawyers Pick Up Cameras to Help Clients

The filmmaker set up his tripod outside a South Bronx public housing complex on a recent morning, recording traffic rumbling past aging buildings, playgrounds, older people greeting one another in Caribbean-accented Spanish and a growing line at a church food pantry.

A man walking by inquired about the purpose of the shoot.

“To get a person out of jail,” said Nicole Mull, a Legal Aid Society lawyer working with the filmmaker, David Simpson.

Ms. Mull and Mr. Simpson are at the forefront of an innovative effort to use documentary-style videos to get their clients more lenient treatment from prosecutors and judges — outcomes like shorter sentences or allowing people to be released as they await trial. Some are submitted as part of plea-bargain negotiations, in the hope of reducing a felony to a misdemeanor or to even get a case dismissed.

Such videos tend to be employed by wealthier defendants in federal cases. The production quality and cost vary widely, but a high-end video can easily cost more than $10,000 — perhaps significantly more.

Now Legal Aid and a criminal defense clinic at Fordham University School of Law are trying to create videos for the defendants they represent: people in state court who cannot afford to hire lawyers, let alone video teams. They say that of the 23 videos they have submitted to the courts so far, 16 have helped draw what they see as favorable outcomes compared with initial offers from prosecutors. They expect to submit six more this month.

“We’re trying to bring marginalized clients something that wealthier defendants who are facing charges are able to avail themselves of,” said Cheryl Bader, the Fordham Law professor who runs the clinic. “It’s a novel way of trying to advocate for clients.”

Mitigation videos, as they are known, often include interviews with the defendant, their family and friends, as well as social workers and psychologists. They can be more than 20 minutes long; Legal Aid makes a point of including context about the defendants’ life stories and the places they come from.

At Fordham, the students formed three teams, and each worked with a defendant on a video during the spring semester. Much of the time was spent on research to build a strong argument and planning on-camera interviews. The clinic is also open to social work and forensic psychology students who plan to work in the legal field. Students from the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia University have contributed research and data visualizations, while editing and postproduction are handled by the Legal Aid team.

The seed grant for the Legal Aid effort came from the Bertha Foundation, which finances film projects with a social justice angle. The human rights nonprofit Witness, which is focused on video and technology, provided support and mentorship. Jackie Zammuto, an associate director of programs at Witness, said that the organization’s guidelines stress ethics and a restrained editing style without flashy effects.

“We’ll often say things like, ‘Don’t include music,’ because that can feel overly manipulative and can take away from what people are saying and be a distraction to the judges or district attorneys,” she said.

One Legal Aid video was a motion to dismiss in the interest of justice, meant to help a 26-year-old defendant facing a drunken-driving charge stemming from a car crash that could have gotten him deported. The young man had fled gang violence in El Salvador as a child and was allowed to stay in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He allowed The New York Times to view the video for this article.

It begins in the living room of his family home, which is in full Christmas mode, featuring a tree with shiny ornaments, a snowman pillow, stockings with each family member’s name, ceramic animals with shiny antlers and scarves on. The visuals drive home a central point: The defendant comes from a tight-knit family that is frantic at the prospect of losing him.

The video included photos of the young man teaching and volunteering with his church as his tearful mother, a psychologist and others attested to his deep remorse. The editors included maps that showed the long overland routes that migrants take to the United States, discussion of what they endure on the way and news clips about the continuing violence in El Salvador. The interviewees also detailed his contributions at work and at home, and talked about how he had already enrolled in addiction treatment and counseling.

The interviews even included the other man involved in the crash, who noted that he was uninjured and that the defendant stayed at the scene and immediately apologized. The man said deportation because of the crash seemed “a little extreme.”

The case was ultimately dismissed because prosecutors had not met their obligation to move the case along in a timely fashion, according to Legal Aid.

One of the pioneers of video mitigation is Doug Passon, a lawyer in Scottsdale, Ariz., who began making them in 2005 as a public defender.

“The goal is not sympathy; it’s empathy, to get the judge to see the world through my clients’ eyes,” he said. “Not to excuse the conduct but to help them put it into proper context — who the client is and why they did what they did and why, hopefully, they’re not going do it again. A lot of those stories we love to tell are redemption stories.”

The videos replace or supplement a written memo and can be submitted directly to prosecutors during plea bargaining, which is how a vast majority of criminal convictions in New York City’s courts are reached. Nearly 150,000 criminal cases were filed in the five boroughs in 2022 alone, according to the state Office of Court Administration.

Both federal and local prosecutors said the videos remain so rare that it’s hard to gauge their efficacy. According to Mark Allenbaugh, the chief research officer at sentencingstats.com, which analyzes federal data, the scanty records available nonetheless indicate a marked rise in the use of mitigation videos around the country, starting in 2015. In a recent search, he found that about 250 have been used in federal cases since that year.

When the videos are introduced, there’s no guarantee that they will be warmly received by a judge. Seth DuCharme, a former acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, said that he believes in-person testimony — whether from a defendant or a character witness — would always be more powerful than a video.

But Mark J. Lesko, who held the same title after Mr. Ducharme, noted that video can also be a powerful tool for prosecutors. His team used them against Keith Raniere, the leader of the Nxivm cult, to allow victims who could not travel to court to speak before sentencing. Mr. Raniere was later given 120 years in prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.

“In the digital age, I think it’s inevitable that this sort of thing will expand,” Mr. Lesko said.

Mr. Simpson and his colleagues are now focused on ways to scale up their project and figure out how to make videos more quickly and easily. At the moment, the student videos take an entire semester to create.

“We want public defenders across the country to be aware of this and not be dissuaded by the price tag,” Ms. Mull said. “Every public defender office should have this tool.”

New York

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Published

5 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Dozens of families were looking for shelter after a large fire broke out at an apartment building in the Bronx early Friday, injuring at least seven people, the Fire Department said. There were no fatalities or life-threatening injuries, according to officials.

About 250 firefighters and emergency medical responders rushed to a six-story residential building on Wallace Avenue near Arnow Avenue after a fire was reported there just before 2 a.m., the Fire Department said. The blaze on the top floor was elevated to a five-alarm fire about an hour later, it said.

Several dozen firefighters were still gathered outside the building at around 10 a.m. Many windows on the top floor were blown out and some had shards of glass hanging in place that resembled jagged teeth. Smoke continued to climb from the building as a firefighter on a ladder hosed the roof.

The fire was brought under control shortly before 2 p.m., according to fire officials.

The seven people who were injured included five firefighters, the department said in an email. One person was treated at the scene but declined to be taken to a hospital.

A spokeswoman for the Police Department said earlier that some people had suffered smoke inhalation injuries.

Robert S. Tucker, the fire commissioner, said during a news conference that it was a miracle that there had been no serious injuries or fatalities. Officials said that all of the apartments on the building’s top floor were destroyed.

Firefighters blasted water at the smoke and flames pouring out of the upper floors and roof, according to videos posted online by the Fire Department and television news outlets. Heavy winds had fueled the blaze, the department said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.

The Red Cross was at the scene helping residents that were displaced by the fire, and a temporary shelter had been set up at the Bennington School on Adee Avenue nearby. Doreen Thomann-Howe, the chief executive of the American Red Cross Greater New York Region, said during the news conference that 66 families had already registered to receive assistance, including lodging. She said she expected that number to increase.

Juan Cabrera and his family were among those seeking help at the Bennington School. Mr. Cabrera said that he and his family had not heard a fire alarm but had instead heard glass breaking as residents climbed out of windows. He said he had also heard people race across the hall one flight above him while others screamed “Get out!”

Mr. Cabrera, 47, said he had smelled smoke and woke up his daughter, Rose, 13. He and his wife, Aurora Tavera, grabbed their IDs, passports and cellphones, and the family left the building.

“I felt desperate,” Ms. Taverna, 32, said.

“Thank God we are still alive,” said Mr. Cabrera, who works as a school aide and custodian and has lived in the building for five years. “The material stuff you can get back, but we have our family,” he said.

Louis Montalvo, 55, was also among those seeking help. He said firefighters banged on his door at around 3 a.m. and that he had smelled smoke.

“I am grateful to be around,” Mr. Montalvo said, as he stood outside of the temporary shelter. He was still wearing his felt pajama pants, which had snowmen printed on them.

Vanessa L. Gibson, the Bronx borough president, said she was “so grateful” there had been no fatalities from the fire.

The last major apartment fire in the Bronx occurred in 2022, and resulted in 17 deaths, which experts said were entirely preventable. Self-closing doors in the building did not work properly, allowing smoke to escape the apartment where the fire started and rapidly fill the structure’s 19 stories.

New York

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

Published

13 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”

To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.

“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.

Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.

The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”

New York

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Published

22 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.

The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.

The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.

Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.

If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”

The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.

In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”

Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”

State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.

Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.

“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”

Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.

“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.

In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”

Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.

A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.

At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.