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History
- Referred to judiciary
- Referred to judiciary
Companion bill
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Enacts the "coerced confession remediation act"
In Assembly Committee · Judiciary · Sponsor Rory Lancman
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
BILL NUMBER:S4634
Title of bill
An act to amend the court of claims act, in relation to enactment of the coerced confession remediation act
Purpose
To ensure that innocent persons who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime will not be barred from due compensation because they made a coerced confession during the investigation or prosecution of the crime.
Summary of provisions
Section 1 titles the bill the "coerced confession remediation act."
Section 2 amends subdivisions 4 and 5 of section 8-b of the court of claims act to allow that when a wrongfully imprisoned person submits a claim for damages to the state such claim will not be barred because of any allegedly inculpatory statement made or provided by the claimant to the authorities who investigated or prosecuted the claimant, unless such statement was intentionally made or provided in order to impede the investigation or prosecution.
Section 3 provides for the act to take effect immediately..
Justification
The state's Unjust Conviction and Imprisonment Act bars wrongfully convicted individuals from suing the state for damages when an individual did "by his own conduct" cause or bring about his conviction. This has been understood to bar recovery where the individual confessed to the crime. The recent New York Court of Appeals decision Warney v. New York allowed an unjustly convicted man to sue the state for damages where he alleged that his confession was coerced, provided that his proof of coercion withstood scrutiny at later stages in the proceedings.
In fact, the likelihood of an innocent person confessing to a crime without coercion is just about nil. The phenomena of manipulated confessions are startlingly widespread and examples of false confessions are unfortunately common. For example, a 2008 study of the country's 200 first post-conviction DNA exonerations (from 1989 to 2007) showed that 169 confessed to serious crimes like murder and rape that we now know using DNA evidence they did not commit.
Nor are coerced confessions necessarily the product of actual or threatened physical abuse. A 1997 study found that as interrogation methods become more sophisticated and rely less on physical fore, and more on psychological tactics, subjects are often manipulated into believing confessing is in their best interest. Innocent people do not confess to crimes they did not commit unless they are coerced and a false confession should never be a bar to a wrongly imprisoned person's right to compensation.
Legislative history
New legislation.
Fiscal impact
Negligible.
Effective date
This act shall take effect immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.