New York bill aims to help the wrongfully convicted. Prosecutors say it would aid the guilty, too

People who have pleaded guilty to crimes they didn’t commit would have an easier time challenging their convictions under a bill passed by New York lawmakers this week, over the objection of prosecutors who warned it might also open the door to endless appeals by the guilty.

Under current state law, people who plead guilty to a crime are usually barred from trying to get those convictions tossed out on the grounds that they are actually innocent, except in cases involving new DNA evidence.

That prohibition would be eased under the bill. Other types of evidence of innocence could be considered, as well as arguments that a person was coerced into pleading guilty.

“If you are innocent, you should not be incarcerated. That is not a radical proposition, that’s not out of step with what most New Yorkers think. That’s exactly how our legal system should work,” state Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat, said when lawmakers were deliberating on the Senate floor.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, hasn’t indicated whether she will sign the legislation.

The law is aimed at people like Steven Lopez, who at age 15 was one of several New York City youths accused of rampaging through Central Park in 1989 and raping a jogger.

Five of the teens who went to prison in that case were later exonerated by DNA evidence, which linked the rape to a serial rapist and murderer. But when the “ Central Park Five ” had their convictions thrown out in 2002, it didn’t apply to Lopez, who had avoided rape charges by pleading guilty to a robbery elsewhere in the park the same night.

The charges against Lopez weren’t thrown out until last year, after the Manhattan district attorney reviewing the case concluded his guilty plea was done involuntarily under immense pressure.

The District Attorney’s Association of the State of New York cautioned, though, that while the…