Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice

09/14/2026

What happens when public defenders have advocates working alongside them to address the broader needs that often affect a criminal case?

That's the question being answered by new research from the Quattrone Center's Paul Heaton and Haley Sturges in collaboration with Partners for Justice.

Read more in Saturday's New York Times for more on the study's results and what they mean for the future of holistic defense: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/headway/can-a-teach-for-america-model-save-public-defense.html

09/12/2026

Holistic defense — the model of "putting clients lives, not just their cases, first" — is having a profound impact on reducing incarceration without compromising public safety.

The NY Times today profiles Partners for Justice, citing the research of QC Academic Director Paul Heaton, Data Analyst Haley Sturges, and others finding that adding client advocates increased the number of cases dismissed or resulting in diversion by almost 50 percent.

Read the full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/headway/can-a-teach-for-america-model-save-public-defense.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AlE.tOpa.X2cH-rQQ9oGZ&smid=url-share

09/10/2026

The interstate extradition dispute over ICE Officer Christian Castro revealed serious gaps in extradition law that will be exploited in future politically polarized extradition cases, writes QC fellow Ethan Lowens in an op-ed today in The Hill. He digs into the ambiguities left by the Constitution's Extradition Clause and the federal Extradition Act — and calls on states to take initiative to clarify extradition law.

A governor who wants to shield someone from a prosecution he objects to, or from a sister state whose politics he finds distasteful, may simply keep an extradition demand “under investigation” inde…

09/08/2026

Curious about what's actually driving the crime statistics we see in the news every day?

Check out this great new episode of the Jeff-alytics Podcast with Jeff Asher where former U.S. Chief Data Scientist Denice Ross sits down to discuss the evolving federal data landscape and why government transparency and data integrity matter more than ever.

Tune into the full episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Gr1lOns8qZb3PmARvwDbC?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The Jeff-alytics Podcast · Episode

09/04/2026

The New Hampshire legislature voted recently to override Governor Kelly Ayotte’s veto of House Bill 1422, a bipartisan measure reforming the state's post-conviction laws. We wrote about Ayotte's veto in our July edition of the QC5 newsletter.

By overriding this veto, lawmakers established en exception to the 3-year deadline that prevented individuals from filing new trial motions even if new evidence or scientific advancements proved their innocence.

This is a critical win for the wrongfully convicted, justice shouldn't have an expiration date.

Read more:

Cynthia Mousseau sat in the front row of the gallery as lawmakers debated a bill that would let people convicted of crimes seek a new trial based on fresh evidence, even after the state’s current three-year deadline has passed. When the vote was finally called, and state senators moved to eliminat...

09/03/2026

The Quattrone Center extends a warm welcome to Visiting Scholar Dr. Naomi Kaplan-Damary!

A lecturer in criminology at the Faculty of Law at the The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Kaplan-Damary’s research brings together forensic science, criminology, statistics, and law to study the evaluation and use of forensic evidence in the criminal justice system.

At the Quattrone Center, she will be working with our affiliated faculty member Dr. Charles Loeffler to study the timing and integration of forensic evidence in criminal cases, with a particular interest in when such evidence has the greatest impact on case processing and outcomes.

09/01/2026

Carissa Bermudez, the daughter of exoneree Fernando Bermudez, shared her "one thing" at the QC Symposium earlier this year — calling for more research into the impact of wrongful conviction on the families of exonerees.

08/31/2026

When Carl Henry Louis was arrested 5 years ago in Missouri, he underwent multiple competency evaluations and was eventually found incompetent to stand trial. But with no psychiatric bed available, he remained in jail awaiting treatment.

Louis' experience reflects a growing problem across the Show-Me State. As of July, 549 people were waiting for competency treatment — up from just 27 a decade ago — with many left in jails ill-equipped to provide the care they need. The Marshall Project dives into Carl's life and the reforms being discussed to ensure his plight doesn't happens to anyone else.

His time in a Missouri jail is a cautionary tale about the dangers of an overwhelmed system where vulnerable defendants and jailers await help.

08/28/2026

As more Americans rely on AI chatbots for free legal advice, law enforcement agencies and corporations are increasingly introducing such conversations as evidence in criminal and civil proceedings.

The Washington Post found 12 instances in which ChatGPT conversations have been included in legal cases — sometimes leading to prosecutions and convictions. SMU Dedman School of Law Professor (and Former QC Fellow) Laura Abelson shared that "it’s very unlikely that any court is going to find that these communications are privileged."

Read more:

The Post found a dozen examples of chatbot conversations being swept into criminal and civil legal proceedings.

08/26/2026

In 2014, Alexis Rodriguez was convicted of attempted r**e in Staten Island in a case that hinged on DNA analysis conducted by New York City’s medical examiner’s office. His conviction was later overturned after a judge found that his attorney failed to adequately challenge that evidence. By the time the charges were dismissed, Rodriguez had spent more than seven years in prison.

Now, Rodriguez is suing New York City and several current and former members of the medical examiner’s office, alleging that analysts manipulated DNA evidence and presented misleading conclusions that helped secure his wrongful conviction. His lawsuit comes more than a decade after the medical examiner’s office launched an internal investigation into the mishandling of DNA evidence in r**e cases, with a subsequent state inspector general’s report finding a “troubling pattern of errors” at the office.

Rodriguez’s case raises troubling questions about the reliability of forensic evidence when the science behind it is not meaningfully tested or challenged—and the devastating consequences that can follow.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/nyregion/new-york-dna-analysts-sued-r**e-conviction.html