Throughout the 1990s, favoritism ran rampant in New York City’s court system: Political leaders within the boroughs were getting state Supreme or Surrogate’s Court appointments from the same judges they’d helped elect.

These appointees are charged with managing the finances of New York’s most vulnerable populations — widows, children, and people with cognitive disabilities — and are paid from the same funds they’re managing.

On Wednesday, New York Focus examined how political patronage never left this appointment system, despite reforms implemented two decades ago by then-Chief Judge Judith Kaye.

When lawyers are appointed by judges based on connections, not competence, clients may be forced to pay for less than stellar representation. And when a politically connected lawyer is appointed, and appears before the same judge for their client, it can raise other parties’ suspicions in the case.

Here are four key takeaways from our investigation.

The finances of New York state’s most vulnerable populations — widows, children, and people with cognitive disabilities — are often placed under the care of attorneys appointed by judges. These lawyers are paid from the same pots of money that they’re charged with managing.

Throughout the 1990s, favoritism ran rampant throughout the appointment process: Political leaders within New York City boroughs often received these lucrative court jobs from the same judges they’d helped get elected.

New York’s reformist chief judge at the time, Judith Kaye, acknowledged the situation during her 2000 State of the Judiciary address.

“Public confidence in the courts is put at risk when judicial appointments are based on considerations other than merit,” Kaye said. “Simply put, the public must have faith that the courts operate free of favoritism and partiality.”

She followed up with rules meant to curb patronage in the court system.

Yet a New York Focus investigation found that since then, county political officials and those involved in the judicial selection process have continued to gain or hold appointments in state Supreme and Surrogate’s Courts.

There are perhaps hundreds of innocent people in New York prisons. Studies estimate that as much as 6 percent of the US prison population is wrongfully incarcerated — that translates to roughly 2,000 wrongfully incarcerated people in the state. Their path to exoneration is narrow: They can appeal their convictions in court, but New York appellate courts rarely grant full exoneration.

Over the past decade, New York prosecutors have been promoting conviction integrity units, commonly known as CIUs, as an alternative path to exoneration. For incarcerated people who’ve exhausted their court appeals, the units are often their last resort.

These specialized departments, typically housed within DAs’ offices, are tasked with re-examining wrongful conviction claims. They promise a fair and independent review, a collaborative fact-finding mission.

New York Focus, in collaboration with Columbia Journalism Investigations, recently published the first installment of an investigation into CIUs and how they operate.

Over the course of a year, we reviewed every known exoneration case in New York counties with a CIU. We interviewed more than 100 exonerees, defense attorneys, legal scholars, current and former CIU staff members, and elected district attorneys in order to evaluate the units’ efficacy.

Here’s what we found.

New York’s state prison commissioner, Daniel Martuscello III, is catching flak from every direction.

Since December, when the state attorney general released video of prison guards beating an incarcerated man to death, Martsucello has faced calls for resignation from prisoners’ rights activists and corrections officers alike. Some of the former see him as the kingpin of a brutally violent system; the latter as a gutless reformer who doesn’t have their backs. He’s faced protests, national outrage, aggressive inquiries from horrified legislators — and, most recently, a wildcat strike from his guards. Through mediated talks with the officers’ union on one hand and promises for reform on the other, he’s been working around the clock to keep both his commissionership and the state prison system itself from falling apart.

How did Martuscello find himself here? While his tenure as prison chief is less than two years old, he’s no stranger to New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS. He came of age in the agency, and knows its ugly side better than anyone.

This week, New York Focus published an in-depth investigation into Martuscello’s ascent. The result of a year and a half of reporting, the article reveals his role as scion of a state prison dynasty. It details not only the commissioner’s rise to power, but his father’s, brother’s, siblings’, in-laws’, and that of his family’s friends across the system.

Thousands of pages of previously unreleased documents and testimony from incarcerated people, advocates, officials, and over a dozen current and former DOCCS staff tell the story of a man who’s found himself at the center of a firestorm, torn between his professed progressivism and his background in a shadowy system.

Here’s what you need to know.