 Following the revised penal code's enactment in 1971, McQuillan then served 21 years as a judge in New York, before retiring from the New York State Supreme Court in 1992.Among his many cases in the news, he ruled against jury exclusions based on gender; against prosecutorial withholding of evidence in the case of Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad; against illegal search and seizure in the case of playwright Miguel Pinero; and against unwarranted government surveillance.He also co-wrote an independent review of flaws in the criminal case mounted against Jeffrey Deskovic, an upstate New York man who spent half his life in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit.