"Terrell Eleby, a Brooklyn native incarcerated in New York's Shawangunk Correctional Facility, wrote to a conviction review unit in Kings County in 2013, asking it to reinvestigate his murder and assault convictions. He claimed in part that police had threatened witnesses to keep them from testifying in his favor. A decade would pass before he learned the unit rejected his application."
"Chad Richards, currently behind bars at the same facility for possessing and selling cocaine, sought a conviction review from a similar unit in Ulster County in 2019. It promised to follow up with him in the "near future." Richards has yet to hear back. And Luis Cherry, another incarcerated New Yorker, contacted a conviction integrity unit in Suffolk County in 2024, when he learned his accomplice's attorney was disbarred for witness tampering after bribing Cherry to lie on the stand."
"Cherry claimed the incident had tainted his conviction. Cherry hasn't heard back, either. None of the men had legal representation when they applied to a conviction integrity unit, or CIU. Like many incarcerated people, they either couldn't afford to hire a lawyer or couldn't convince one to take on their wrongful conviction claims. They applied on their own - what the justice system calls "pro se.""
Multiple incarcerated New Yorkers applied pro se to county conviction integrity units (CIUs) seeking reinvestigation of convictions. Applicants alleged police threats to witnesses, a disbarred attorney who tampered with witnesses, and other misconduct that could undermine convictions. Responses from CIUs were slow, opaque, or nonexistent: one applicant waited a decade to learn of rejection, another received promises of follow-up and heard nothing, and another never received any reply. Lack of legal representation compounded difficulties. The CIU process mirrors systemic complexity and secrecy, leaving applicants uncertain whether units received, reviewed, or acted on their claims.
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