Criminal Justice (Judges)

This bill, "Fair Court of Appeals Access Act," changes how criminal defendants request permission to appeal to the Court of Appeals. It requires all applications for leave to appeal from intermediate appellate court orders to be submitted directly to the full Court of Appeals (not to individual judges or justices), applying to all criminal appeals filed after the law's effective date. Key provisions include mandating written submissions to the Court of Appeals clerk (with the chief judge designating a judge to review), replacing current options where some applications could go to appellate division justices, and requiring immediate filing of all decisions. This directly affects criminal defendants seeking higher court review of lower court rulings.

This bill, the "Criminal Court Opinion Transparency Act," requires New York courts to publish detailed statistics about criminal cases online, including defendant demographics (age, gender, race, ethnicity), judge information, and case outcomes. It mandates that this data be made available in machine-readable tabular format for free public download, updated quarterly, and accessible through a searchable online database. The bill also requires court clerks to automatically transmit criminal court opinions to the state reporter in machine-readable format within five days of issuance, without cost to municipalities. These changes aim to increase public access to judicial decision-making processes in criminal cases.

This bill requires New York courts to publish detailed criminal case data online in a machine-readable format. It mandates collecting and sharing defendant demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity), judge names, case issues, and publication status for every criminal case, with new data updated quarterly. The information must be accessible via a free public database allowing search and bulk download for analysis. This affects courts (which must transmit data) and the public (which gains access to previously unpublished case details). The law applies to all criminal cases, including those resolved in favor of the defendant.

Requires justices of the supreme court, judges of the county court and judges of the court of claims, regularly sitting in a criminal term or in a term with criminal as well as civil jurisdiction to visit the correctional facility with the highest population of incarcerated individuals in the county in which such justice is appointed or elected within two years of such appointment or election and every two years thereafter; requires a report on the conditions of such correctional facility.