New York Civil Rights Law Blog

The United States Justice Department has filed a civil rights lawsuit following an investigation into police practices in Ferguson, Missouri. The city was the scene of massive protests and unrest after a police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in 2014.

Although the police officer was not charged in connection with the shooting, the Justice Department conducted an investigation of the local police department, ultimately finding there had been systemic incidents of police misconduct, as well as incidents of financial irregularities in the local court system.

An individual's civil rights deserve to be protected at all costs. Last week's post on this blog discussed how prosecutors can be held accountable for civil rights violations that they commit and that land an innocent person in jail on account of a lie or fabricated evidence.

It is true, as that post stated, that prosecutors do have a special obligation to make sure that those who get sent to prison for crimes are in fact guilty of those crimes. However, it may be worth clarifying that, for now, New Yorkers would have to be content with holding a prosecutor accountable by filing an ethics complaint against him or her, which could wind up costing the prosecutor his or her job or even license to practice law.

New Yorkers may be familiar with the University of Cincinnati based on its successful basketball team and other sports programs. However, this school recently found itself the subject of an article in the New York Times for a far less flattering reason; it recently settled a major civil rights lawsuit against the school's law enforcement unit.

The school will pay $4.85 million to the family of man who died after a university police officer shot him during a traffic stop. The traffic stop was for not having a proper license plate and the man, who was black, had no weapon. For the use of excessive force that even the local prosecutor called "senseless," the police officer was fired. He is now looking at the possibility of a murder conviction.

A recent post on this blog discussed how prisoners in New York maintain certain rights even while they are in prison. One of these rights is the right to use the court system in the same way that other citizens use it. This means not only that prisoners should be able to file cases, but also that they should have some means of learning how to do so, such as through a prison law library.

While the news is often rife with stories of inmates abusing this right, what New Yorkers might not think about is how important the right itself is for prisoners who are honestly facing neglect, abuse or other obvious injustice at the hands of the state. A prisoner's basic human right to not to be abused is worth little if the prisoner cannot effectively enforce that right in court.