Small Town to Spend Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Wrongful Convictions

A solution for open arrest #warrants from @BrooklynDA | as reported by @NewYorker http://t.co/tyF7HqZphi … pic.twitter.com/RtNGU56Q9g

— Hour Children, Inc. (@hourchildreninc) July 29, 2015

A vindictive old white man reigned supreme in a local hamlet for 13 years, and, now that he’s gone, the city is discovering the wrongful conviction of an as-yet unknown number of people, with an accompanying cost of tens of millions of dollars in settlements so far, while his legacy remains his apparent or perhaps totally coincidental attempt to procure convictions for anyone who dared oppose him. That small town is Brooklyn, and that old white man is former District Attorney Charles Hynes. His many good deeds, like working out alternative programs to incarceration for drug offenders, are not at this time the most talked about of his achievements. The new DA, Ken Thompson, who is not an old white man but may be vindictive, is excavating convictions; so far, 13 dating from 1985 to 1997 have been overturned, according to the Times, and a very dramatic 14th conviction, from 2009, was just thrown out. It’s no Ferguson, but you know, it hasn’t really been great.

In better news, it’s almost time for the second annual Begin Again day, when you can clear out your warrants for silly crap and start over.