LEGACY OF 50-A: WHY IS LETITIA JAMES TRYING TO RESURRECT A REPEALED LAW MAKING POLICE RECORDS SECRET?
"I THOUGHT COPS WERE SUPPOSED EXPOSE LAWBREAKERS, NOT COVER UP FOR THEM."
The bicycle of a protester during the George Floyd uprising in Tompkins Square Park in New York City. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK Nov. 19, 2025
For the second time in five days State Attorney General Letitia James told a state appeals court in Albany police records are secret and the State Legislature was wrong to repeal a law requiring they be secret.
That's the upshot of legal arguments James' office made in Nicholas v Martuscello and Munson v New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Both cases involve public access to police records and in both cases James' office argued the public should be denied access.
In effect, James is attempting to resurrect New York Civil Rights Law section 50-A through a favorable court decision. For decades after its 1976 enactment, 50-A made the records of police and correction officers secret. In the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder by police in Minnesota, state lawmakers repealed 50-A so they would be public.
Police accountability activists began pushing lawmakers to repeal 50-A in the wake of the unjustified NYPD killing of Eric Garner in 2014. The public deserved and needed to have access to the records to hold police accountable, they said.
For example, 50-A blocked Valerie Bell from finding out about the NYPD officers who gunned down her unarmed 23-year-old son, Sean Bell, in a hail of 50 bullets the night before his planned 2006 wedding.
"Today because 50-A has been expanded through politics and case law, families cannot even get the most basic details about the officers who have killed our loved ones," Bell testified at a 2019 legislative committee hearing.
"Like their names," Bell explained, "and if they are still patrolling our streets."
Nicole Paultrie Bell protesting the NYPD killing of fiance Sean Bell at NYPD headquarters, May 7, 2008. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
State Senator Jamaal Bailey and Assembly Member Danny O'Donnell both sponsored legislation to repeal 50-A in their respective houses of New York's bi-cameral legislature. They failed to gather the support needed five years in a row.
Then came a popular uprising demanding police accountability in the wake of Floyd’s murder.
Even celebrities—including Rhianna, Mariah Carey, Arianna Grande and the Jonas Brothers—added their voices to a grassroots chorus calling for repeal of 50-A. Lawmakers suddenly had the votes. They passed a package of police reform legislation including repeal of 50-A. Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bills into law.
"We have passed some tremendous legislation because the moment is now," Andrea Stewart-Cousins, State Senate Majority Leader and President, said during a joint June 12, 2020 news conference with Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.
Still, the repeal of 50-A and other police reforms, Stewart-Cousins acknowledged, was only a "beginning." It's "a move to bring justice to a system that has long been unjust."
Police unions fought a losing rear-guard legal battle against the repeal.
In 2023, three years after 50-A's repeal, James and Gov. Kathy Hochul were still resisting public requests for police records, The Free Lance reported two years ago. Now, five years after 50-A's repeal, Hochul and James are still blocking the public from reviewing police records—records the legislature explicitly said should be public.
In the first case James is arguing against public access, the State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department is considering an appeal by this publication, The Free Lance News. We are suing for a declaration that the public has a right to access police disciplinary hearings across the state.
The Free Lance News is also asking the Third Department to order the release to it of records of the prison guards who murdered Robert Brooks. Brooks was tortured and killed by a beat-up squad of all-white guards while nurses watched at the Marcy Correctional Facility outside Utica on Dec. 9, 2024.
In the second case James is arguing against public access, Emilie Munson, a reporter for the Hearst-owned Albany Times Union, is suing for a master list of all law enforcement officers in the state. A lower court judge ruled in the venerable newspaper's favor, twice—even awarding it $10,000 in legal fees for making Munson to through the trouble of suing to get public records state officials should have just given to her.
James' office appealed, twice—including from the $10,000 fee award.
Releasing the list would increase the risk of harm to law enforcement "officers and their families," Assistant Attorney General Beezly Kiernan told the appeals court on Wednesday.
"It makes it easier to identify undercover officers," he claimed.
Nina N. Shah, Munson's Hearst Corporation lawyer, made clear a ruling in the state's favor would, in effect, revive the repealed 50-A in much the same way courts expanded 50-A by decisions interpreting it expansively. That’s because, in this case, a ruling against public disclosure of the list would empower police departments to withhold officers’ names even if they are not actively undercover.
All police officials would have to do to make officer information secret would be claim the officer may serve undercover in the future or even that they once did.
If the Attorney General's argument is "permitted to stand, it would turn FOIL on its head," Munson's legal brief said, using the standard abbreviation for New York's Freedom of Information Law.
"There is no way to accept" state officials' "reasoning," the reporter’s legal brief continued, without creating "a categorical exemption for any record naming law enforcement officers, simply because some of those officers might in the past, present, or future serve on an undercover assignment ..."
Officials would end up "withholding all officers' names," Shah, Munson's lawyer, told the court on Wednesday.
Contrary to James's arguments, releasing the list would not increase risk "beyond pre-existing risk," Shah added, given all the digital data resources already available that could be used to identify undercover officers.
During our argument to the Appellate Division last Thursday, The Free Lance News stated the argument for public access to police records in a simple, single and easy-to-understand sentence:
"I thought cops were supposed to expose lawbreakers, not cover up for them."
Send tips or corrections to jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me