Seneca Falls Town Hall Lawsuit Dismissed

Seneca Daily News:

SENECA FALLS— A lawsuit filed by the former Town Supervisor against a group of citizens asking to hold a referendum on renovating the town hall has been dismissed....

Acting Supreme Court Justice W. Patrick Falvey granted a motion to dismiss the case, agreeing with defense attorney Steven Getman that [Peter Same, the former supervisor] had waited too long to bring his case and had failed to properly serve all the necessary parties to the lawsuit.

New move to avoid ID errors in criminal cases

Rochester (NY) Democrat & Chronicle:

A spate of exonerations in recent years has revealed the weaknesses of memory and witness identification. Of the 289 people exonerated nationally by DNA evidence over the past quarter-century, about 75 percent were wrongly identified by witnesses....

Local police agencies say they have embraced change. They've revised policies within the past two years to match improved identification guidelines from the state District Attorneys Association and the Division of Criminal Justice Services, or DCJS. They've also trained officers to ensure that communications with witnesses are not leading, and encouraged police to actually position themselves out of sight of a witness viewing a photo array so there are no unintended signals....

Still, some say more can be done to eliminate human error or intentional or unintentional directions from police to eyewitnesses....

A New York task force, created by Court of Appeals Chief Justice Jonathan Lippman, has studied the core causes of wrongful convictions and plans to push legislation to tackle the common issues, such as misidentification and false confessions....

New York Attorney General sues banks, MERS registry, for "fraud"

The New York Attorney General has announced a major lawsuit against several of the nation’s largest banks for deceptive & fraudulent use of the MERS electronic mortgage registry.

According to the Attorney General, the banks, Virginia-based MERSCORP, Inc. and its servicers engaged in “deceptive and fraudulent practices that harmed homeowners and undermined the judicial foreclosure process.” The lawsuit names JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Bank of America, N.A., Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. as the involved banks.

The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief, money damages for harmed homeowners, and civil penalties.

The complete complaint against the banks and MERS can be found here.