trial Archives - Pappalardo & Pappalardo LLP

Use of Stun Belts by New York Corrections Officers

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. Corrections officers provide a necessary service to manage those accused of or convicted of crimes who are in custody. To that end, officers may need to use various forms o...

Use of Ballistics Evidence in Court Called Into Question

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. When a firearm is used in a crime, bullets and fragments can be left at the scene. For investigators, this can be a source of potentially identifying evidence. But can poli...

Actually Innocent: How Common Are Wrongful Convictions?

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. Blackstone’s ratio is taught in many criminal law classes. Written by English jurist William Blackstone, the idea is that it is better that ten guilty persons go free than...

What Makes a Competent Witness in a Criminal Prosecution?

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. When a person is on trial for a crime, the only evidence the jury can consider is competent evidence. This is evidence which is admissible, material, and relevant. When it...

Dropping Criminal Charges: What Crime Victims Face in New York

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. Most crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. In most cases, the perpetrators and the crime victims know each other. As with domestic violence cases, the parties may...

Voir Dire: The Process of Selecting a Jury in New York

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. In New York, lawyers can question prospective jurors to determine their qualification for service. This questioning process, called voir dire, is important to the criminal...

The Grand Jury and Its Role in the NY Criminal Legal System

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. The term petit jury refers to the jurors who determine a defendant’s guilt or innocence. In contrast, a grand jury is a larger group of jurors that determine whether there...

The Trial Penalty: Why Criminal Defendants Often Take a Plea Bargain

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. Most criminal cases in today’s legal system are resolved by the defendant entering a guilty plea rather than by trial. Why? Because if a defendant goes to trial and is foun...

Death of George Floyd: What Is the Police Officer Charged With?

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. In May of 2020, the United States saw protests and riots after George Floyd died while being arrested by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In a widely-circulated video, as...

The “Gay Panic” Defense: Outlawed In New York

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. In the summer of 2019, New York became one of several states to ban “gay panic” defenses in homicide cases. Now, defendants cannot defend against a murder charge by claimin...

Case Study: Use of Low Copy Number DNA Evidence in Criminal Trials

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. The “CSI effect” can refer to jurors believing in the infallibility of DNA evidence in criminal trials. However, is all DNA evidence reliable? For example, in People v. Cad...

Trial by Skype: Video Conferencing of Criminal Trials in New York

By Jill K. Sanders, Esq. When the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic hit New York, the courts in our state closed for several weeks. Since then, many court appearances and conferences have been happenin...

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