Joshua Knowles said he feels like a thousand-pound weight has been lifted from him, after more than four years of waiting for his day in court.
That day that week, actually resulted Friday in a verdict of not guilty on charges of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and second-degree theft. I m ready to move on, Knowles said. I m ready to get on with the rest of my life without this.
Knowles, 32, was charged after an allegation was made against him in December 2016. He was arrested and spent about two months in jail before defense attorney Randy Phillips succeeded in getting his bond reduced from $60,000.
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Durbin, Lee Introduce Bipartisan Inspector General Access Act
The bill is supported by a broad coalition of advocates from across the political spectrum, including American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Demand Progress, Due Process Institute, FreedomWorks, Government Accountability Project, Government Information Watch, Innocence Project, Justice Action Network, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Taxpayers Union, Open the Government, Protect Democracy, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Public Citizen, R Street Institute, Right on Crime, and The Sentencing Project.
WBFO s Thomas O Neil-White reports. But as New Yorkers United for Justice Executive Director Alexander Horwitz tells it, sentencing inequalities along racial and socio-economic lines lead to problems in post-release supervision.
“New York’s parole system is costly, it is broken and it is racist, he said.
NYUJ is a bi-partisan criminal justice reform coalition.
“New Yorkers spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a system that fails to deliver on its actual purpose,” Horwitz said. “Which is to safely bring home people from incarceration, permanently.”
The coalition launched a statewide public campaign to urge the state legislature and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make parole reform a top priority for the 2021 legislative session.