During the series of court hearings held this winter in the case of the now-exonerated Roy Brown, his attorneys from the non-profit legal clinic Innocence Project consistently called for an “innocence commission” to dissect how wrongful convictions come about.

Because of cases like Brown's, a New York City Assemblyman has proposed legislation that would create an innocence commission with members appointed by state government's executive, legislative and judicial branches to investigate cases of wrongful convictions and make policy recommendations on how to prevent them.

The Innocence Project, which exclusively takes cases where DNA testing might prove innocence, says that 197 defendants have been exonerated nationwide.

“The problem seems so systemic that we need a systemic solution to prevent this from happening again,” said Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, a Democrat representing the 36th District in Queens.

Gianaris' press secretary is Maggie McKeon, daughter of Auburn City Court Judge Michael McKeon.

“I was taught in law school there's few things more unjust that someone who has committed no crime to be deprived of their liberty,” Gianaris added.

Gianaris wants to limit the purview of an innocence commission to the minority of cases, like Brown's, where the judicial review of appeals is over and where a defendant has been determined to have been wrongfully convicted.

Brown's indictment and conviction in the May 1991 murder of county social service worker Sabina Kulakowski were dismissed respectively in two separate decisions by Cayuga County Surrogate Judge Mark Fandrich following the discovery of DNA evidence that points to another suspect: Barry Bench, the brother of Kulakowski's estranged boyfriend and who committed suicide in 2003.

Kulakowski's murder is now the subject of an open homicide investigation by the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office.

Gianaris likens his proposed commission to the work of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates every civil aviation accident in the country.

The Assemblyman said he is not assigning blame within the system, but he would like a means to figure out why a large number of innocent state defendants have been convicted of crimes they did not commit. Gianaris' legislation notes that the system works mostly because more than 90 percent of felony criminal cases in the state involve guilty pleas.

His legislation requires that a cross-section of the criminal justice system - law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and others - be represented by a 10-member commission. The members would not be paid a salary, but their investigative work would be paid for. It would have subpoena power, but no judge would be required to testify about their decisions.

Four members would be appointed by the governor, two by the Chief Judge of the state Court of Appeals and one each by the commission of the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, the state Attorney General, the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly.

Stephen Saloom, the Innocence Project's policy director, notes that 75 percent of the project's cases involved eyewitness misidentification and 25 percent involved false confessions made during police interrogations. He believes that an innocence commission could make policy prescriptions based on past wrongful convictions to try to prevent others.

“The existence of the problem is clear,” Saloom said. “And New Yorkers deserve to know that their government is addressing this problem in order to enhance the public safety and protect the innocent.”

Gianaris' legislation moved onto the floor of the state Assembly, but there will probably not be a state senator introducing similar legislation for several months.

“With every new exoneration that occurs, this kind of project picks up new momentum, and people realize more and more how important it is to have something like this,” Gianaris said.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net