Raymond M. Brown and Rachel E. Simon Quoted in Articles on Newark's Request for U.S. Supreme Court Review of Case Involving Civilian Complaint Review Board
Rachel E. Simon of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. was quoted in Law360 article, “Newark Asks Justices to Back Police Oversight Board Powers.” The article discusses a petition for certiorari filed by the City of Newark asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if the New Jersey Supreme Court violated the U.S. Constitution when it took away the subpoena power of Newark’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) tasked with overseeing the city’s police department.
The Supreme Court should take this case now because police interaction with civilians of color is among the paramount issues facing our country today," Rachel E. Simon of Pashman Stein Walder & Hayden PC, representing Newark, said in an email to Law360 on Tuesday.
Simon said review boards must have power to investigate to be effective.
"Without subpoena power, Newark's CCRB cannot obtain sufficient evidence to reach a 'substantiated' conclusion on any misconduct complaints," she said. "An investigative body that cannot obtain the evidence necessary to reach a substantiated conclusion is futile, and certainly not serving its intended oversight function."
For the full Law360 article, click here
Raymond M. Brown and Rachel E. Simon of Pashman Stein were quoted in the “Justice Matters” column on Reuters in the article, “Newark Asks U.S. Supreme Court to address the ‘elephant in the room’. “
"We were particularly struck that the court seemed to avoid the elephant in the room," said Rachel Simon, a lawyer at Pashman Stein representing Newark in the petition, along with Kenyatta Stewart of Newark Corporation Counsel. "The decision seems like a particularly tortured (instance of) statutory interpretation to avoid dealing with the real important questions."
Raymond M. Brown, Simon's co-counsel and partner at Pashman Stein, said the argument is not that "the tools of formal statutory interpretation aren't critical, but we sought to have reality meet legality."
For the full Reuters article, click here.