PRISONER SEX SUIT SOUGHT
From The Buffalo News, Legal Aid Society attorneys will ask Southern District Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy to reconsider his recent ruling dismissing a class action lawsuit filed by female prisoners alleging a pattern of sex abuse by male prison guards at Albion Correctional Facility and other all-women prisons. Duffy ruled the plaintiffs didn’t exhaust the prison system’s grievance system before taking their complaint to federal court. “[State officials] know that by assigning male staff to female prisoners, they place women prisoners at substantial risk of experiencing sexual misconduct; that sexual misconduct by staff is ongoing and recurrent [and] that victims of sexual abuse or harassment in a correctional setting are unlikely to come forward with complaints,” the lawsuit alleged. The state prison system has approximately 2,750 women prisoners, while five of the state’s 69 prisons are exclusively for women inmates. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for any sexual abuse in the system,” said Erik Kriss, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections. “We train all of our officers on this issue, and every incoming prisoner gets information on how to recognize, prevent and report these incidents. Since 1996, we’ve also had an internal sex crimes unit that investigates these reports with the State Police and other outside agencies. It’s not just a situation where we police ourselves.”

APPELLATE BENCH APPOINTMENTS
In keeping with his putative mandate to appoint more women and minorities to New York’s appellate bench, Governor Eliot Spitzer yesterday appointed Manhattan Supreme Court Justices Karla Moskowitz and Rolando T. Acosta to the Appellate Division, First Department. The New York Law Journal has the story. The openings were created by the retirement of Justice Joseph P. Sullivan and the addition of a new judgeship, and mark a departure from the appointment history of former Governor George Pataki, who appointed only four women, two blacks and two Hispanics to the First and Second Department benches in his 12 years as governor. There will soon be room for more such appointments should the governor see fit: two current First Department Judges, Bernard J. Malone, Jr., and E. Michael Kavanagh, are Third Department residents who are candidates for two of the four openings on the Albany-based appellate court. Additionally, First Department Judge George D. Marlow is leaving at the end of January to resume hearing cases in Dutchess County Supreme Court and to run a new statewide ethics education initiative.

A COMMENDABLE (IF NOT CONTINGENT) QUESTION
Elsewhere, Forbes runs an AP story about the Second Circuit’s refusal to grant a new trial for two convicted murderers on the grounds that the trial judge neglected to question jurors who indicated on questionnaires that they were opposed to the death penalty. Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez were convicted in 2004 of racketeering, drug trafficking, and the 1999 murder of police informant Eddie Santiago. While encouraging judges to question prospective jurors about their stance on the death penalty, the panel ruled the failure to do so is not tantamount to a constitutional violation. “The practice is commendable,” the panel wrote. “The bluntness or hesitancy, confidence or discomfort, displayed by prospective jurors as they respond to questions about the possibility of returning a capital verdict often reveals as much about bias as the actual answers given.”

TANKLEFF, RECONSIDERED 
Finally, Newsday weighs in on the troubling case of Martin Tankleff, whose murder conviction for killing his parents was recently vacated by the Appellate Division. The newspaper recommends appointing a special prosecutor to investigate new suspects in the murder — now that current Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota faces a probe by the State Commission of Investigation into his office’s handling of new witnesses whose testimony exonerated Tankleff — and also has a story about how the original jurors say they got the verdict right, based only on the evidence presented to them at trial.