Willow Higgins is a New York City-based reporter who investigates criminal justice and social issues. Her work appears in New York Focus, Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer and the Austin Monitor.
Our investigation into conviction integrity units reveals that they reinforce a broken system. Help us expand on this reporting.
A once-touted statewide conviction review unit lacks independence, authority, and transparency — and Albany hasn’t moved to fix it.
The attorney general’s conviction review bureau has investigated just a handful of innocence claims of the hundreds it’s received since 2012.
The secretive units have fallen short on their promise to help wrongfully convicted New Yorkers.
Our investigation identified dozens of cases in which a wrongful conviction unit denied someone’s application, only for a judge to later exonerate them.