Christine Bella’s answer to the question of what she wanted to be when she grew up was always the same: lawyer.

“I was the first person in my family to go to law school, so I didn’t really know what that meant,” she admits. “But I knew that it sort of carried some weight; it offered a means to maybe correct something and help people.”

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For nearly thirty years, Christine has brought that weight to bear as an attorney with The Legal Aid Society, working in all three practice areas, Civil, Criminal Defense, and Juvenile Rights.  

“I started when mass incarceration was in full effect, it was brutal, and awful to bear witness to,” she said. “I think that has driven me to use my career as a means to root out injustice or be a champion for people who might not otherwise have access or might not otherwise have a voice.”

Perhaps most shocking was the treatment of young people she observed at every step of the process. Christine represented children in both the foster care and juvenile justice systems. 

“The Board of Education brought in the NYPD in the name of public safety, and suddenly normal teenage behavior was treated like a crime,” she said. “Outside of school, kids were arrested and taken to court for minor behavior, such as jumping a turnstile, trespassing, or even snowball fights.”

After years of representing clients in court, Christine joined the Special Litigation and Law Reform Unit (SLLRU) in Legal Aid’s Juvenile Rights Practice, hoping to fix the systems she saw failing young people every day.

Change came slowly. But after nearly a decade of legal battles, the team led by Christine settled a landmark case that forced the state to stop using dangerous prone restraints on children. The settlement also meant that young people would finally receive the comprehensive mental health care they were legally entitled to in youth detention centers.

The case revealed another critical gap: young people often had no idea how contact with the legal system could follow them for years, limiting access to education and employment—despite laws designed to protect them from discrimination. To address this, Christine created Set the Record Straight, a project aimed at ensuring young people are not punished long after their cases are closed.

Christine’s contributions to Legal Aid have been numerous. Highlights include the creation of a Youth Leadership Board, which provides critical perspective on the Juvenile Rights Practice, and a victory forcing the NYPD to destroy a secret database containing tens of thousands of children’s fingerprints. 

Today, Christine’s career has come full circle, returning her to her roots, directly representing clients. For the past five years, she has worked with the Wrongful Conviction Unit (WCU), working to exonerate people who have exhausted their other legal options. It can be a frustrating process filled with false starts and dead ends. Cases often involve a tangled web of complicating factors, including false accusations, official misconduct, misleading forensic evidence, mistaken identification, and false confessions. New York State does not make many records readily available, further hindering the process. Christine has started a program to recruit and train private attorneys to assist WCU with obtaining relevant case documents.

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Ronell Sheffield has always maintained his innocence in a case of sexual assault that occurred on Staten Island in 1989. 

When they first began working together, Mr. Sheffield sent Christine a long letter, outlining his case, but also his personal history. It was a poignant moment.

“I knew all the places, I knew the systems, I knew the language,” she recalled. “I just saw how his life started in family court and ended with a 25-year prison sentence. It was overlapping my whole trajectory, legally, all the injustices that I tried to address. He’s been impacted by so many of them.”

In November 2021, Christine contacted the District Attorney’s Office in Staten Island, seeking a review of Sheffield’s conviction. Through Bella’s persistence, it was determined that evidence existed that could be tested against Mr. Sheffield’s DNA. In July of 2024, Mr. Sheffield was ruled out as a source of the DNA found in a related rape kit. The only eyewitness in the case was also reinterviewed in 2024, telling investigators that in her heart, she believed she had picked the wrong person. Mr. Sheffield did not match the description of the perpetrator and officers used suggestive tactics to obtain the single identification that led to his conviction.

In January 2026, the conviction was thrown out, and Mr. Sheffield’s name was finally removed from the sex offender registry.

“For more than thirty-five years, Mr. Sheffield has carried the weight of this rape conviction for a crime he did not commit,” Bella said at the hearing. “Today’s decision does more than correct a legal error. It hopefully restores a measure of humanity that was taken from him.”

“I told Ms. Bella “when I first met her that [this] was a crime I would never commit. And for years every day of my life has been in jeopardy by prisoners and mostly officers [due to the heinous nature of the crime],” said Sheffield upon his exoneration. He thanked his family for supporting him and Bella and the Wongful Conviction team for believing in him. He added, “I hope the world knows this is something I wouldn’t do.” 

“It’s just everyone’s worst nightmare, right? To be locked up and sent away for a crime you did not commit,” said Bella. “And it’s also the isolation. Nobody believes you. You have no credibility. Everything you say is considered self-serving and therefore is devoid of believability or credibility.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile,” she said. “On the day he was exonerated, Mr. Sheffield smiled a lot, as some relief washed over him.”