This past year has been unusually eventful for the state's highest court. The tragic death of Associate Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam in mid-April shocked legal observers. But while the first African-American female judge's term on the bench was relatively short—she was confirmed in 2013—she authored some decisions that had widespread influence, such as the June 2016 landmark ruling expanding the definition of parenthood in New York.

In mid-June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that Paul Feinman, an appellate justice in Manhattan, would be his choice to fill the Court of Appeals seat left vacant by Abdus-Salaam's death. Feinman, whom Cuomo elevated to the Appellate Division, First Department, in 2012, became the first openly gay member to serve on the state's highest court. In February, Rowan Wilson, a longtime litigation partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, was confirmed to the state's Court of Appeals, replacing Eugene Pigott Jr., who was required to step off the Court of Appeals on Dec. 31, 2016, because of the court's mandatory requirement rules, though he later returned to the bench as a trial judge in Buffalo.

Despite the transitions, the state's highest court continued to rule on cases that will have influence for years to come. The Court of Appeals delved into the issue of race and skin color in jury selection, as well as the budding intersection of technology, privacy and the law. The list is not in any order of relative significance.

1. Facebook Loses Search Warrant Case- In re: 381 Search Warrants directed to Facebook Inc., New York State Court of Appeals No. 16

In April, the state's highest court ruled 5-1 in a widely watched case that the court lacked the legal jurisdiction to challenge the Manhattan district attorney's bulk search warrants for content held by 381 Facebook users. The majority decision, written by Associate Judge Leslie Stein, upheld lower court rulings that Facebook didn't have the right to ask a higher court to quash search warrants obtained in a criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Prosecutors in July 2013 had obtained the warrants ordering Facebook to turn over information belonging to individuals, including police officers and firefighters, suspected of fraudulently receiving Social Security benefits.

Facebook had argued that the warrants by Vance's office were too broad. The California-based social media company also had argued that the Manhattan DA went too far by prohibiting Facebook from telling users about the search warrants. It is up to the targets of the warrants, not third parties—such as Facebook—to challenge warrants, Stein wrote in the decision. Judge Rowan Wilson dissented, describing the warrants as “authorizing the seizure of private information en masse” and leaving Facebook with no recourse.

The ruling was a defeat for advocates for internet privacy, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed amicus curiae briefs in support of Facebook. Other internet-based companies, including Kickstarter and Foursquare, had also filed briefs in support of Facebook.

2. Court Rules Against Aid-In-Dying: Myers v. Schneiderman

The state's highest court in September rejected the argument that mentally competent, terminally ill individuals have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, dealing a blow to the “aid-in-dying” movement. The plaintiffs in the case had asked the state Court of Appeals to declare a right to aid-in-dying, which they defined as the right of a mentally competent and terminally ill person to obtain a prescription for a lethal dosage of drugs from a physician to hasten death. In the unsigned per curiam opinion, the court ruled that the state had legitimate reasons for outlawing such a practice. The plaintiffs had argued that the ban of physician-assisted suicide violated the New York constitution by depriving to individuals the right to self-determination. The decision affirmed that a physician who helps a patient commit suicide by prescribing a lethal dose of medication may be criminally prosecuted.

In a separate opinion, Associate Judge Jenny Rivera agreed with the majority that there is no broad right to physician-assisted suicide, but argued that there should be an exception for mentally competent, terminally ill patients facing “certain, imminent, excruciating death.” The state may not “unduly burden a terminally ill patient's access to physician-prescribed medication that allows the patient in the last painful stages of life to achieve a peaceful death as the end draws near,” Rivera wrote. But Judge Michael Garcia disagreed with Rivera on that point, saying the state's interest in outlawing assisted suicide is “irrespective of a patient's proximity to death or eligibility for terminal sedation.”

While the Court of Appeals ruling was a blow to aid-in-dying advocates, it doesn't mark the end of the road. For several years, legislative efforts have been underway to pass legislation allowing for mentally competent, terminally ill adults access to lethal doses of medication to end their lives. The court's ruling punted the issue of aid-in-dying back to the Legislature, where the proposal has yet to gain traction among legislative leaders.

3. Presenting Evidence: People v. Trevor Anderson/People v. Leonard Williams

PowerPoint presentations can be used in courtrooms so long as they “accurately represent the trial evidence” and there's no “blatant appeal to the jury's emotions,” the state's highest court ruled in April.

Chief Judge Janet DiFiore wrote for the court that while there is no inherent problem with the use of PowerPoint presentations as a visual aid with closing arguments, the materials must be limited to the characterizations of facts that are “within the four corners of the evidence.”

“If counsel is going to superimpose commentary to images of trial exhibits, the annotations must, without question, accurately represent the trial evidence,” DiFiore wrote for the unanimous court. “Moreover, any type of blatant appeal to the jury's emotions or egregious proclamation of a defendant's guilt would plainly be unacceptable,” she added.

4. Court Requires Instructions on Cross-Race Witness ID's: People v. Otis Boone

New York state judges will be required, if asked, to instruct juries that witness identifications of suspects who are of a different race than the identifying witness may be less reliable, the state's highest court ruled in mid-December. During final instructions a trial court is required to give—on request—a jury charge on the cross-race effect. The jury would be instructed to consider whether there is a racial difference between the defendant and the witness who identified the defendant. If so, the jury should consider that people “have a greater difficulty accurately identifying members of a different race than in accurately identifying members of their own race,” the opinion states.

In addition, the jury should also consider whether the difference in race affected the accuracy of the witnesses' identification. While Associate Judge Michael Garcia concurred in the decision's result, he wrote separately saying, “the majority's approach will function as it was apparently intended: a mandatory charge. This unprecedented approach is overinclusive, may be harmful to jurors, and suggests a lack of confidence in our State's trial judges. It will also spur ramifications far beyond this case.”

5. Exclusion Based on Skin Tone Is Prohibited: People v. Bridgeforth, 207.

Excluding a juror based on his or her skin tone is prohibited under the New York Constitution, the state's Court of Appeals ruled in January. The state's highest court unanimously decided that the way the jury was selected for a robbery trial in Queens Supreme Court violated the protections declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky, which protects against preventing the exclusion of jurors solely based on their race, color, creed or religion.

This was the first time the court explicitly differentiated that race and color are not the same with respect to juror bias, and that a person's skin color could be a basis for cognizable discrimination under the state constitution and civil rights statutes.

“Defendant argues that 'contrary to the people's position, dark skin color is a cognizable class and, indeed, must be one unless the established protections of Batson are to be eviscerated by allowing challenges based on skin color to serve as a proxy for those based on race,'” Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam wrote. “We agree with defendant.”

Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and Judges Eugene Pigott Jr., Jenny Rivera, Leslie Stein, Eugene Fahey and Michael Garcia joined in the ruling.

The decision was praised by the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at the Seattle University School of Law, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of 20 civil rights organizations and a group of 32 law school professors in the case which involved a dark-skinned juror who said she was born in India who was excluded from the jury in 2012, illegally the court decided.

The Court of Appeals reversed appellant Joseph Bridgeforth's conviction and ordered a new trial, saying the prosecution's striking the dark-skinned juror was illegal under Batson.

6. Mall Project on Former Shea Stadium Denied: Matter of Avella v. City of New York

In the majority decision in June, the Court of Appeals ruled that New York and a Queens developer lacked legal authority to develop a billion-dollar shopping mall on a portion of the Citi Field parking lot where Shea Stadium once stood, affirming a lower court's ruling that the project requires the approval of the state Legislature to proceed.

In the majority decision, the court noted that the former site of Shea Stadium is considered park land, and building on it would require the state Legislature to pass a new law. In 1961, the state Legislature enacted a law allowing the plot of land to be used for a municipal baseball stadium. In order to build the mall, lawmakers would have to pass a new law approving the site for that specific use.

In a joint amicus curiae brief, the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and Parks & Trails New York argued that the case represented an opportunity for the court to declare that lands reserved for public use not be surrendered for private development without proper authority. The decision to develop the land in Queens for a mall, which developers say will spur economic opportunity, is now in the hands of the Legislature.