The Legal Aid Society filed an amicus brief at the New York Court of Appeals to argue that trial courts should allow the questioning of key witness police officers about directly relevant prior bad acts. In the cases at issue, defense counsel had sought to question the officers about their intentional arrests of people knowing that they did not commit any crimes, their unlawful strip searches of them, and their use of unjustified force against them. In the decision below, the First Department effectively endorsed a higher standard for impeaching police witnesses based on prior bad acts, even where those acts bear directly on the credibility of the account put forth by a defendant’s key accusers. In its June 2016 opinion, the Court of Appeals instructed that law enforcement witnesses should be treated in the same manner as any other prosecution witness and held that Court’s may allow cross examination about bad acts that have never been formally proved at trial.