By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma I was in the elevator of my new building on Lexington Avenue when the news came down that a Manhattan grand jury returned a “true bill” against the 45th president of the United States. The exact charges remain unknown but they appear to stem from Donald Trump’s use of his business right […]
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Donald Trump and the Manhattan Grand Jury
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Every criminal lawyer knows that feeling when you get the call from the prosecutor telling you: your client is getting indicted, does he want to testify? Your stomach sinks. It’s different from hearing that your client is worried he did something wrong, or knows he is under investigation. It means the case […]
I was sexually harassed in a strip club. Can I sue?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Many workers in strip clubs are well-paid, hard-working women supporting their families and using the extra income from the club to take control of their lives. Many clubs treat their workers fairly. Many customers are polite and appropriate. But not all. If you have been taken advantage of at a strip club, […]
I am Adnan Syed
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The protagonist of the legendary Serial podcast that put the scourge of questionable convictions into millions of ears in 2014 was set free yesterday after 24 years in prison. Adnan Syed, 17 at the time, was convicted of stabbing his high school classmate Hae Min Lee in suburban Baltimore and dumping her […]
What do you mean they searched my house? Warrants, receipts and affidavits explained
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma If it could happen to defeated former president Donald Trump it could happen to anyone: the feds swooped in and searched his house last week—all 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms were up for grabs. Go big or go home. There was a lawyer there but the resident was out-of-town. FBI agents left […]
A kind of justice
By Zach Margulis-Ohnuma She sat in front of me, bald, shellshocked, speechless, drug addled. The government had charged her with moving massive quantities of GBL and meth, gal Friday to a big-time drug dealer working the nightclubs. She was looking at a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence, no bail. The plan was to send her to […]
Can the Supreme Court survive the stench?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Two unprecedented things happened in the legal world this week. First, someone at the Supreme Court—in an unheard of breach of protocol—leaked the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health out to the public. Second, the substance of Dobbs draft indicated that for the first time ever, the Supreme Court is […]
What the sentences for child pornography are supposed to be
We heard a lot in the last week about judges who sentence people to too little prison time for child pornography. In case it was not obvious coming from foamy-mouthed demagogues in what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body, it was all hogwash. Child pornography sentences are off-the-charts too high in almost every case. […]
Federal Mandatory Minimum? You can still get compassionate release
By Tess Cohen The Second Circuit recently decided in United States v. Halvon that federal defendants can have their sentence reduced under the compassionate release statute even if the reduction means they are incarcerated for less time than required by mandatory minimum sentences. This is good news for people convicted of serious federal crimes. The […]
Can I use the internet if I am convicted of a sex offense?
By Benjamin Notterman For decades, parole officers have imposed restrictions on how people convicted of sex offenses can use the internet. Some of these restrictions made sense; others were just blanket prohibitions that became more and more onerous as the internet and social media became more enmeshed in everyday life. Last month, a federal court […]
No Mayor Adams, Rolling Back Reforms is Not the Answer to Gun Violence
By Tess Cohen A series of tragedies dominated the news cycle over the last few weeks, including horrific incidents of gun violence. In the Bronx, a baby was shot by a stray bullet. In Harlem, NYPD Officers Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera were shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance. Although homicides began […]
Reforming Laws Affecting People Convicted of Sex Offenses
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma There is a quiet struggle in New York State to ease the irrational burdens on people convicted of sex offenses. While the political winds mostly blow in the direction of more and more restrictions, policymakers are coming to realize that making life miserable for people does not actually improve public safety. As […]
What Do District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s New Policies Mean for Manhattan?
By Tess Cohen Manhattan has a new district attorney who is introducing change on a scale not seen in decades, but reactions to the changes have been overblown, if not alarmist. DA Bragg’s Day One Memo explains that his policies are based on data proving reflexive incarceration does not make us safer. As the New […]
Exonerating James Pugh
A Buffalo judge will take testimony over the next three days at a hearing on whether ZMO Law client James Pugh should be exonerated in the murder of Deborah Meindl in 1993. The case has all the markings of a file noir, or, better, a season of a true crime drama spanning three decades. It […]
Is the Kenosha verdict a tragedy?
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma The second major Black Lives Matter verdict is in, and it was an acquittal. After the first verdict, the murder conviction of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for intentionally asphyxiating George Floyd, the Rev. Al Sharpton said “we don’t celebrate a man going to jail, we would rather George be alive.” Many […]
The Odyssey of James Pugh
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma When Jeff Hetzel and I first spoke to our prospective client in the summer of 2015, it seemed like a lost cause. The case was way up in Buffalo, the client was in Cape Vincent on the Canadian border, and seven witnesses had testified that James Pugh, our client, and Scott Lorenzo, […]
The Dangers of False Rhetoric Around Bail Reform
By Tess Cohen CBS New York recently reported that New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea struggled to back up his repeated claims that the 2019 bail reform law is the reason that gun violence increased in New York City during 2020. This criticism comes as no surprise given that Shea’s claims were directly contradicted […]
Recidivism and Federal Sentencing
By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma Many of the outrageously high sentences doled out in federal court are driven by fear — fear that a person convicted of a crime once will go on to commit another crime once he or she is freed back into the community. That’s called recidivism. Judges care about it and the U.S. […]