Brooklyn prosecutors see exonerations dip amid NYC and nationwide decline, data show

Today's newsletter is curated by James Ramsay

Weather: ⛅ Partly sunny, highs in the mid 80s.

It's Tuesday in New York, where Kenneth Windley spent nearly 20 years in prison for buying his mom a stove with a money order he didn't know was stolen.

Then, earlier this year, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office finally admitted that Windley was innocent — and a judge overturned his conviction, setting him free.

Exonerations like Windley's have been a proud hallmark of the Brooklyn DA’s office since its Conviction Review Unit was formed in 2014. But over the last year, they've become extremely rare — the unit exonerated only one person in 2025.

Is the decline due to fewer people being wrongfully imprisoned to begin with — or is it getting harder for attorneys to free wrongfully convicted defendants?

Here's what else is happening:  

• Spring is finally here? We hope? Here's what New Yorkers are looking forward to this season.
• A new bill in Albany would allow apartment dwellers, whether renters or homeowners, to partly power their homes with affordable solar panels that hang from the window.
• Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman said yesterday that if elected, he'd immediately pardon a former NYPD sergeant who was convicted of second-degree manslaughter for throwing a cooler in the path of a man fleeing a drug bust on a motorized scooter.
  • Blakeman argued that Erik Duran, who was sentenced last week to three to nine years in prison, was "thinking out of the box."
• New Jersey authorities have identified the man who was killed in a mass shooting at a Union County Chick-fil-A last weekend as 23-year-old Malek Shepherd. 
• NewYork-Presbyterian has agreed to undertake a series of reforms in response to claims that the hospital allowed patients experiencing mental health crises to leave without authorization, the state attorney general’s office said.
• Crews in New Jersey have begun assembling a pair of custom-built, single-use, extremely expensive machines that will dig out the new train tunnels under the Hudson River.

• Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a Hudson Valley swing district, took (and returned) some harsh words at a recent town hall.
• Since Mayor Mamdani took office, the financial service industry's New York City employment numbers have hit a record high.
• Meet the orange cat who survived getting hit by a Long Island Rail Road train.
• The New Jersey affordable housing tax credit administrator who's been rocking on "Jeopardy!" used one of his little chat segments to scold New York for not building enough units.
• "Bees are sold by weight, like cheese or cocaine": Welcome to the Upper West Side's annual live bee hive sale.
• Keegan Michael-Key is in every commercial.
• It's a little disappointing to see people dry-snitching on their favorite expensive chicken restaurants.