New York Courts Hit New Low

Long harm of the law
The New York Post by William J. Gorta  -  July 12, 2011

Wait to be arraigned 'inhumane'

Hundreds of prisoners are languishing in holding pens -- in violation of a court order -- as overtime and budget cuts wreak havoc with Brooklyn arraignments, The Post has learned.  According to data obtained by The Post, nearly half of the prisoners awaiting arraignment at the start of each of six days last week had been held longer than 24 hours without seeing a judge.  The arraignment courts were so jammed over the Fourth of July weekend that on July 3 more than 57 percent had exceeded the 24-hour limit.  And it only got worse on Independence Day, when it hit 59 percent, with more than a quarter of those 379 prisoners having waited more than 36 hours.  Between Sunday and Friday, July 8, nearly 44 percent of the people in the system had been there in excess of 24 hours.  The delays -- spurred by $170 million in budget slashes that included weekend courtroom hours -- are in direct violation of a 1991 Court of Appeals ruling that any delay over 24 hours was "unnecessary."  "Last week was not a great week, and the holiday weekend did not help matters," said Judge Lawrence Marks, administrative director of the Office of Court Administration.  Delays are common throughout the city, he noted, but "Brooklyn has presented the greatest challenge."  And while he insisted that the daily snapshot numbers exaggerate the extent of the problem, his own figures were not much better: On average, 37 percent had been illegally held more than 24 hours without seeing a judge.  Reduced weekend hours, in place since June 11, are causing the system to bottleneck, Marks said.  Arraignments used to run from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Those days now have a single shift of 1 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.  A 3-11 p.m. shift and a third arraignment part were added on Fridays to try to reduce the weekend workload, Marks said.  Still, many of the people arrested over the weekend finally got to see a judge yesterday afternoon.  "They arrested me on Friday at 5:30 [p.m.], and I just got out now -- 72 hours later. It ain't right," said Donald Haywood, 16, after being arraigned on assault and weapon-possession charges.  Ana Rios, arrested for alleged criminal mischief Saturday night, waited about 40 hours.  "It's horrible," she said. "It's inhumane. There's nothing clean back there."  Defense lawyer James Kirshner said the holding pens were "packed like sardines" yesterday.  And that, said Dennis Quirk, head of the court officers' union, endangers his members and the public.  "It is a safety issue, definitely a major security problem," he said.  A lawyer can get a writ of habeas corpus from a Supreme Court justice to force officials to produce the prisoner, but "by the time you're finished, the guy will probably be out anyway," Kirshner said.  "It's a law with no effect." Defense attorney Gerald Lefcourt, who submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the 1991 appeal, knows that all too well.  "This has been a perennial problem," he said. "It just goes on and on."  william.gorta@nypost.com