A Nightmare Court, Worthy of Dickens

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/opinion/a-nightmare-court-worthy-of-dickens.html

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In September 2012, John Carridice, a father of four, intervened to break up a street fight in the Bronx. When the police showed up, they arrested him and charged him with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and other misdemeanor violations.

Over the next few years, Mr. Carridice, now 38, appeared 20 times in Bronx Criminal Court. Six times, prosecutors said they were not ready for a trial. Ten other times, both sides were ready, but no judges or courtrooms were available. In June 2015, more than a thousand days after his arrest, Mr. Carridice’s case finally went to trial. He was acquitted on all counts.

This Dickensian nightmare is all too common in the Bronx, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Federal District Court by the Bronx Defenders, which represents indigent clients, and by two private law firms. The suit alleges that backlogs in the borough’s criminal courts have led to delays so extreme — the average wait for a jury trial on a misdemeanor charge is 827 days — that they violate the Constitution.

The problem is a horribly managed court system that has neither the resources nor the incentive to move any faster, the plaintiffs say. Most misdemeanor defendants, like Mr. Carridice, are not jailed during this time, but they are required to return to court every several weeks and spend all day waiting for their cases to be called, only to be told that the proceedings are being put off for another month. Having to appear in court, time after time, means these defendants miss work, lose wages and in some cases their jobs.

While trial delays are a problem in many New York courts, none are remotely as bad as in the Bronx — the poorest of New York City’s five boroughs and the poorest county in the state. Misdemeanor defendants who try to exercise their constitutional right to a jury trial wait twice as long as those in Manhattan, two-thirds longer than in Brooklyn, and half again as long as in Queens, according to the complaint. In 2015, Bronx courts processed 45,000 misdemeanor arraignments but only 98 misdemeanor trials, a drop of 40 percent in trials from 2014.

After a 2013 series in The Times revealed similarly egregious waits for defendants facing felony charges in the Bronx to have their cases resolved, court administrators focused more attention and resources on those cases. That had the effect of exacerbating delays in misdemeanor cases, which account for more than 80 percent of all cases in the borough.

Court officials point out that most misdemeanor charges are either dismissed before trial or result in plea bargains. But in many cases, a defendant will plead guilty simply to avoid having to wait years for a trial.

There are some things state officials can do immediately. The current budget for the city’s criminal courts, roughly $137 million, is clearly not enough and needs to be increased significantly. Meanwhile, judges could excuse defendants from having to show up at every court appearance, a power they rarely use.

Finally, New York’s speedy-trial law, which requires low-level cases to go to trial within 60 or 90 days, is a farce, permitting delays of months or years for which no one can be held responsible. A smarter law would require prosecutors to bring a case to resolution in that time, even if the delay is caused by court congestion.

The lawsuit names as one of its defendants Janet DiFiore, the new chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals and the top administrator of the state court system. Judge DiFiore said in February that reducing these “dramatic” delays would be her immediate focus. For starters, reducing the delays would require more resources, better laws, and transforming the dysfunctional culture that has long plagued the justice system, and the citizens, of the Bronx.