The Legal Aid Society filed this amicus brief at the U.S. Supreme Court to urge the Court to grant certiorari in Copeland v. Vance and strike down New York’s gravity knife law. The law was repealed in 2019 after significant advocacy by Legal Aid.

In the brief, we highlighted how an obscure provision of New York’s weapons law, written to outlaw a knife created in the 1950s for use by German paratroopers, ensnared thousands of innocent and law-abiding men of color into the criminal legal system who used common folding knives for work. One client, E.P., was sentenced to 2.5 to 5 years in prison for possessing a utility knife that he purchased at Home Depot. His freedom turned on whether an officer was skilled enough to force his knife to open with the flick of a wrist, a test that the New York State Legislature never intended and had twice voted to repeal, only to be thwarted by gubernatorial veto. Legal Aid argued that New York’s then-application of Penal Law §§ 265.01(1) and 265.02(1) failed to meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause because it left arresting officers, prosecutors, judges and jurors free to decide guilt without any fixed standards. In June 2019, the Supreme Court denied certiorari.