Prosecutor Watchdog Arrived in Albany—So Far, City's Cases Still Languish in Limbo

New York’s long-awaited watchdog for rogue prosecutors languishes, raising thorny questions about accountability and justice.

If bureaucracy could be measured in weight, the state’s new Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct would barely tip the scales. Its second annual report—an anemic five pages before appendixes—lays out, with the joylessness of an actuarial table, the work accomplished since Albany greenlit the panel in 2021: office space secured, attorneys hired, 479 complaints received, and, so far, a solitary case resolved. For New Yorkers wary of wrongful convictions or prosecutorial overreach, the promise of oversight has materialized in the most Teutonic of forms: a structure, but precious little action.

The tale began with a rare consensus. After years of lobbying from defense lawyers, innocence advocates, and the wrongfully convicted—some of whom had spent decades locked up due to withheld evidence or sharp-elbowed tactics—state legislators established the commission to scrutinise prosecutors across New York’s 62 counties. It took until 2024 to appoint Susan Friedman, a well-regarded innocence attorney, as administrator. Yet since opening its doors, the body has only managed to investigate 18 cases, issuing findings in just one: a relatively trivial upstate incident referred by Governor Kathy Hochul, which, critics note, had nothing to do with anyone’s liberty.

The commission’s inaction has not gone unnoticed. Defense attorneys, including Thomas Hoffman of New York City, point out the curious prioritisation—scrutinising a district attorney’s ill-advised roadside behaviour rather than the courtroom conduct that, in some notorious cases, put innocent New Yorkers behind bars for a generation or more. Among three dozen pending complaints are accusations against a Queens prosecutor implicated in three exonerations, and a Brooklyn assistant DA who, in a gem of old-school prosecutorial zeal, concealed that a key eyewitness had fingered someone else for murder.

For the city, the stakes are anything but tepid. Unlike rogue police officers, prosecutors have long operated with near-total impunity. Past generations of district attorneys, including Brooklyn’s infamous Joe Hynes era, relied on a “win at all costs” ethos that, critics argue, sometimes crossed ethical (and legal) boundaries. As revelations of wrongful convictions have piled up—New York City has vacated more than 75 such cases in the past decade—the demand for a bite rather than a bark from watchdogs has grown louder.

The failures of accountability ripple beyond the courtroom. For every exoneration, there is typically a multimillion-dollar payout, draining Gotham’s coffers. New York City has shelled out more than $250 million in wrongful conviction settlements over the past 12 years. The human cost, while less easily quantified, is staggering. Each exoneration represents not just a miscarriage of justice, but often lost decades and a community’s fraying trust in its institutions.

Worse still, the shadow of prosecutorial impunity distorts incentives within district attorneys’ offices. A regime with no meaningful sanction risks emboldening “ends-justify-the-means” behaviour, especially in high-profile or politically charged cases. Reform efforts—from voluntary “conviction review units” to training—are to be applauded, but as any hard-nosed bureaucrat knows, carrots rarely suffice without an accompanying stick.

Globally, America remains distinctive, if not unique, in the independence and discretion granted to its county and state prosecutors. In England and Wales, the Crown Prosecution Service is overseen by the Attorney General’s Office, with a robust record of disciplinary proceedings (and, occasionally, sackings). Canada’s provinces maintain independent complaints boards for crown attorneys. Even within the United States, jurisdictions like Texas and California have begun experimenting with modest prosecutor oversight bodies, with mixed success yet greater output than New York’s commission has mustered.

What accountability can—and cannot—achieve

It would be puny governance indeed to allow this bureaucratic inertia to fester. In fairness, Friedman and her team inherited a daunting brief. Staffing, procedure writing, and investigative protocols are neither glamorous nor swift. As with any new agency, early years portend growing pains—compounded, perhaps, by Albany’s penchant for underfunding and the ambiguous legal terrain over which the commission presides. Prosecutorial conduct roams a legal grey zone, shielded by broad immunity and, in practice, the deference of the judiciary.

We reckon, however, that the commission’s languor cannot be indefinitely excused by start-up woes. To command public trust—and have any hope of deterring future abuses—the body must show itself willing to discipline, or at least meaningfully censure, prosecutors where courts have found serious misconduct. Even a handful of robust, public cases would provide a welcome jolt, altering incentives far beyond the unlucky few in the dock.

In New York City’s sprawling legal machinery, a credible threat of oversight could curb the more cavalier instincts of would-be “justice warriors.” It might also salve some of the city’s deepening mistrust between law enforcement, prosecutors, and communities still reeling from mass incarceration’s legacy. To be sure, a commission cannot remake a culture overnight, nor does due process permit star-chamber justice for overzealous DAs. But the status quo—sunlight without disinfectant—risks deepening cynicism on all sides.

Ultimately, the tale of the prosecutorial commission is one of New York’s chronic afflictions: the urge to declare victory by establishing a formal structure, then hope that the appearance of action will suffice. The city’s resilience depends not on the proliferation of reports but on real, measurable change. Harsher critics may liken the present effort to a Potemkin village—visible, well-publicised, and insubstantial.

Momentum, once frittered away, is hard to recover. New York’s experiment in prosecutorial discipline is neither inevitable failure nor predestined farce. It retains the ingredients, and the mandate, to become a moderate but meaningful check on powers long unchecked. But for now, all it truly oversees is its own promise. ■