NEW YORK, NY – There are “significant lapses in judicial oversight of law enforcement actions” across New York state, according to Scrutinize’s recently released data-driven report,“Unprotected: Judicial Failures to Safeguard Constitutional Rights from Law Enforcement Overreach.”
The goal of the report, said Scrutinize, is to analyze and identify cases where “trial court judges ruled that officers acted constitutionally in obtaining evidence,” but were overturned by appellate judges.
Scrutinize emphasized the importance of these cases given the critical role of judges in the upholdment of constitutional rights. Specifically, the source noted, “their decisions can shield New Yorkers from law enforcement abuses such as unlawful stop-and-risk tactics” and “coerced interrogations.”
Scrutinize reported that between 2007 and 2023, “95 percent of judges had multiple suppression decisions reversed.”
Among those cases, about “38 percent of the reversals were dismissed” after findings that suggested trial court errors “in denying suppression” further suggesting the possibility of wrongful incarceration “due to unconstitutionally obtained evidence,” according to the report.
The study also claims the reason an additional 69 cases were overturned was because of “judicial errors that limited or prevented constitutional scrutiny of law enforcement actions.”
Oded Oren, founder and executive of Scrutinize, said the findings of the report further advanced Scrutinize’s “mission to bring New Yorkers the transparency they deserve” and claimed that “when the judiciary fails to protect people from ‘law enforcement overreach,’ it threatens the core of our justice system.’”
Scrutinize also released a fact sheet titled “Harnessing AI to Enhance Judicial Transparency,” that illustrates “new methodology using large language models (LLMS) to accurately analyze judicial decisions” in order to further enhance judicial transparency.
