Category: In the News

The new initiative, called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, emerged from several years of study and lobbying among immigration lawyers and immigrants’ advocates. They were concerned that the absence of competent legal representation for many of New York’s immigrant detainees was resulting in unnecessary deportations that ruptured families and put an undue financial […]

Bronx residents who can’t make their bail now have a financial backer who can help them avoid jail time. The Bronx Freedom Fund has already helped five cash-strapped defendants charged with misdemeanor crimes avoid pretrial detention since it launched last week. Clients, many of whom have no prior arrests and face minor drug charges, are […]

Jahlanni Greene, 17, is a happy high school student. Aki Ferguson, 25, is a butcher. Jason Stewart, 32, is a maintenance worker. All three lead different lives and are different ages, but they are all black men, they all live in Hunts Point and they have all been stopped and frisked by the officers of […]

The Bronx Defenders, with a staff of about 200 advocates, provides support and services inside and outside the courtroom to more than 30,000 clients year. The Bronx Defenders notes that one in three people arrested are never convicted of a crime, yet they suffer drastic collateral consequences from their arrest alone. Up to 40 percent […]

Daryl Rodrigues is someone who can find some good in just about anyone ensnared in the justice system for crimes they often, but not always, committed. As director of the Thurston County Office of Assigned Counsel, he has plenty of opportunity to search for redeeming qualities in defendants. He oversees 17 attorneys, two paralegals and […]

Former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy once said: “What has been demonstrated here is that usually only one factor determines whether a defendant stays in jail before he comes to trial. That factor is not guilt or innocence. It is not the nature of the crime. It is not the character of the defendant. That […]

On a recent afternoon in the South Bronx, Cordice Smith, a 79-year-old Korean War veteran wearing a Yankees hat, was standing in the tiled lobby of his apartment building — something he no longer takes for granted. Earlier this year, he almost lost his home after receiving a letter from his landlord’s lawyer: an eviction […]

In some neighborhoods in this city, it’s not uncommon for people to file an allegation of child abuse or neglect to settle a grudge. In a meeting with City Limits, lawyers and social workers from The Bronx Defenders, which represents parents with child welfare cases in the Bronx, described a string of such cases: a […]

Aiming to foster the rights of immigrants and to keep their families together, two legal services organizations, the Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defender Services, have been picked for a unique pilot project to represent indigent detainees facing deportation. The two organizations will form the New York Immigrant Defenders, which will take on 166 cases in […]