On October 29, McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of our Civil Action Practice, spoke about the civil consequences of conviction at the 2011 Symposium “Sentencing Law: Rhetoric & Reality” at University of Pennsylvania Law School. For more information: http://www.pennumbra.com/symposia/
Robin Steinberg spoke on a panel on Systemic Reform at the Innovations in Criminal Justice Summit in Chicago on Wednesday, September 28, 2011. For more information please click here.
On September 27, McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of our Civil Action Practice, trained more than 200 public defenders at the South Carolina Public Defender Association Annual Conference on how to use the Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky to get better results for clients. For more information: http://www.sccid.sc.gov/userfiles/PD-Conference-2011/2011-Agenda-Final—9-14-11.pdf
Robin Steinberg spoke at Increasing Public Confidence: A Roundtable on Community Justice held at the Center for Court Innovation’s office in NYC on August 10, 2011. For more information please click here.
A bill sponsored by Bronx state Senator Gustavo Rivera now headed to Governor Cuomo’s desk will allow charities to post bail for defendants charged with petty misdemeanors. Thousands of Bronxites do hard time at Rikers Island because they can’t afford to post bail. But new legislation headed to Gov. Cuomo’s desk could set them free….
The Bronx Defenders was awarded a grant from the Oversight Board for Judiciary Civil Legal Services Funds in New York. This 2011-2012 grant comes from the $12.5 million that the OCA is distributing to 56 civil legal service providers. For more information please read the New York Law Journal article.
Robin Steinberg spoke on a panel at The National Criminal Justice Association’s 2011 National Forum in Jersey City, NJ, on Tuesday, August 2, where The Bronx Defenders was showcased as an innovation in criminal justice. For more information please go to The National Criminal Justice Association website.
By McGregor Smyth. From the moment of arrest, people charged with crimes find themselves caught in a web of punitive sanctions, in danger of losing their jobs, homes, children, and right to live in this country. Politicians over the past thirty years, eager to be “tough on crime” at the expense of being smart on…
Robin Steinberg and McGregor Smyth spoke at the 2011 Community-Oriented Defender Conference on July 22 at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. Their session was titled Confronting the Leadership Challenge for Public Defenders Created by Padilla v. Kentucky. For more information, highlights and video clips, please click here.
At the American Bar Association 2011 Annual Meeting on August 4-9 in Toronto, Bronx Defenders Executive Director Robin Steinberg will accept the 2011 Hodson Award. The Hodson Award named in honor of the distinguished public service career of the late Major General Kenneth J. Hodson, a former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army, and…
Article published in the Howard Law Journal by McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of the Civil Action Practice and Director of Reentry Net, examines the practical effect of Padilla for criminal defense attorneys currently working with clients on pending cases. The article uses the legal reasoning of Padilla to outline a structure for approaching the daunting…
Join The Bronx Defenders’ Young Professionals Committee on Tuesday, June 21, from 7-9PM at The Wharf Bar & Grill in Manhattan for a discussion on the NYPD’s controversial Stop & Frisk policing strategy. At the Wharf, you will meet like-minded individuals, talk to Bronx Defenders staff about the real life implications of Stop & Frisk…
Robin Steinberg, Executive Director, McGregor Smyth, Managing Attorney of the Civil Action Practice, and Jennifer Friedman, Supervising Immigration Attorney in the Civil Action Practice, presented at the “Padilla and the Future of the Defense Function” conference at the Jacob Burns Ethics Center in the Practice of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law on June 20-21,…
Bronx, New York—May 16, 2011—The Center for Holistic Defense (“The Center”), a project of The Bronx Defenders, in collaboration with The Center for Court Innovation, is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of The Holistic Defense for Public Defender Offices Technical Assistance Project. 2011 Participants of The Holistic Defense Technical Assistance Project Harris County Courts—Texas…
Robin Steinberg spoke at WNYC’s Greene Space on a panel discussing Stop and Frisk. This panel, a part of The NEXT New York Conversation, discussed both sides of the controversial police strategy and how this procedure affects New Yorkers. “Even as violent crime rates in New York have dropped dramatically in the past 15 years,…
[This is the second part of a two-part series. Read the first part here.] Illegal searches are more common than people realize, but few end up getting challenged in court, law enforcement officials and defense attorneys say. Checks and balances within the criminal justice system are intended to ferret out improper arrests, but many defendants and…
Police arrest 140 people every day in New York City for possessing small amounts of marijuana. It’s now by far the most common misdemeanor charge in the city, and thousands of these arrests take place when police stop-and-frisk young men in the poorest neighborhoods. While police say these stop-and-frisks are a way to find guns,…
Robin Steinberg, our Executive Director, spoke to the Colorado Public Defenders and Defense Bar at The University of Denver. The training was titled: “Better Serving our Clients: Holistic and Client Centered Representation.” Robin spoke in two sessions: “Holistic Representation: The Bronx Defenders Model” and “How Do I Make This Happen? Resources and Parameters”.
Kumar Rao, Staff Attorney, spoke at the New York State Defenders Association program Criminal Defense Tactics and Techniques XIII at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He ran the training on “Plea Negotiations: Theory, Strategies, and Tactics.” Event details: Criminal Defense Tactics and Techniques XIII presented by the New York State Defenders Association Saturday, April 2,…
Even before she graduated from Stanford Law School in 2010, Michelle Parris knew she wanted to help people with psychiatric disabilities and take a holistic approach to defense law. She designed a project with that in mind and received a two-year Equal Justice Works fellowship and an assignment at the Bronx Defenders. Still in the…
Jenay Nurse, a Criminal Defense Attorney, spoke at the New School event “Youth in Harm’s Way: Marijuana, Law Enforcement and Young New Yorkers” on Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. “According to the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services, seventy percent of the 50,383 arrests for possession of marijuana in New…
The Bronx Defenders’ method of Holistic Defense is explained in the article “Can the ‘Holistic Approach’ Solve The Crisis in Public Defense?” on thecrimereport.org. Can the ‘Holistic Approach’ Solve The Crisis in Public Defense? “Making changes in a resource-strained small county [Washoe County, Nevada] of 400,000 people seemed , however, all but impossible—until Bosler heard…
The Center for Holistic Defense, a project of The Bronx Defenders, is mentioned in the blog “Justice for all”. In the post “Let’s make this a movement: Holistic Advocacy”, blog writer Akhila Kolisetty draws from The Bronx Defenders’ new model of public defense—Holistic Defense. The blog describes the “importance and necessity of holistic advocacy, and…
The Bronx Reentry Working Group: “I’m Home . . . What Next? A Community Forum and Resource Fair” A FREE hands-on community forum for understanding what it takes to come home after incarceration. Saturday, May 7, 2011 9:00 A.M. – 4:00 P.M. Bronx School for Law, Government, and Justice 244 East 163rd Street Bronx, NY…