Conference report: New York City's criminal courts: are we achieving justice?

• Author: Rayner, Martha

INTRODUCTION

On October 18, 2003, at a conference hosted by the New York County Lawyers' Association and the Fordham University School of Law's Louis Stein Center on Law and Ethics, (1) more than one-hundred professionals, having diverse roles, and from the five boroughs of New York City, came together to identify, evaluate, and begin to solve some of the complex problems firmly embedded in the culture, operations, and practice in our City's Criminal Courts. They came together in an effort to enhance justice in New York City's Criminal Courts.

In her welcoming remarks, Judge Juanita Bing-Newton, Chief Administrative Judge of New York City's Criminal Courts, (2) emphasized the extraordinary volume of cases that move through the City's Criminal Courts (3) and stressed the importance of justice in any discussion of the Criminal Court as the Criminal Court is where the "Constitution and the public intersect in a dramatic way."(4)

Like Judge Newton, Norman L. Reimer, the day's keynote speaker and president of the New York County Lawyers' Association, (5) stressed the overwhelming number of case filings handled by Criminal Court. (6) It is the Criminal Court that forms the impression of justice for tens of thousands of our fellow citizens--the accused, the victimized, and their families and friends. Reimer concluded that "all too often it is not a good impression." (7) Addressing prosecutors, public and private defense attorneys, judges, court clerks and administrators, probation officials, policy makers, members of advocacy organizations, academics, and others, he emphasized "our collective responsibility to do something about this" as the Criminal Courts have both the power to "destroy and to save lives." (8) Reimer urged the participants to aim for "a system with all components working at optimum level so that the process of deciding who deserves what result is as reliable as possible, and to see that the proper outcome is available and administered fairly and competently." (9)

The conference planners (10) designed the conference to emphasize the collective responsibility each organization has for enhancing justice in New York City's Criminal Courts. The courts do not function in isolation; they are part of a complex system with components parts that are numerous, varied, and often independent of the court. Police, prosecution, defense, probation, and corrections, to name the most prominent, are all integral to the functioning of Criminal Court, yet traditionally, each component takes responsibility for only its own, circumscribed role within the court system. Thus, for example, the persistent, deplorable lack of attorney-client interview space in the courthouses is primarily relegated to defense organizations to solve, while in fact it is a problem that negatively impacts the entire system and is emblematic of the negative impressions formed by at least one sector of Criminal Court "users:" defendants. The conference challenged participants to move beyond their traditional workplace roles in Criminal Court and reflect thoughtfully on difficult, system-wide problems.

Though defined by law as "local" courts, (11) New York City's Criminal Courts are commonly referred to as the lower courts or courts with "inferior jurisdiction." (12) Under New York State's "complex, somewhat unique, and in the opinion of many, antiquated" (13) court structure, New York City's Criminal Courts have preliminary jurisdiction over all offenses (14) and trial jurisdiction over misdemeanors and violations. (15) The Criminal Courts in each borough (16) handle the arraignment for all arrests, from subway fare evasion, and the subsequent adjudication of all non-indicted felonies, misdemeanors, and violations. (17)

As a result of changes in policing policies, the number of misdemeanor arraignments increased more than sixty percent from 1992 to 2002. (18) In 1993, New York City implemented a policing strategy that emphasized maintenance of public order, a policy now commonly referred to as quality-of-life policing. (19) The policy mandated zero tolerance for minor misdemeanor crimes (so-called "quality-of-life crimes") and targeted offenses such as turnstile jumping, public drinking, and panhandling. (20) As a result, the number of misdemeanor cases flowing into Criminal Court increased dramatically. (21) At the same time, the number of felony cases decreased significantly. (22) Thus, the Criminal Court caseload has greatly increased with misdemeanor cases accounting for a much higher percentage of the caseload. (23) In 2002, the Criminal Courts handled 327,592 felony and misdemeanor arraignments and the resulting misdemeanor caseload. (24) These massive Criminal Court caseloads present an immense challenge to the achievement of justice.

The charge of excessive caseloads has been long leveled at the Criminal Courts. In 1983, the Criminal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York described the City's Criminal Court as "a system out of control--a crowded, heavily time-pressured, continually depressing market place in which the need simply to dispose of cases has overshadowed everything else, and in which it has almost never been possible to use real care in separating out the innocent and imposing sensible penalties on the guilty." (25) In 1989, the Office of Court Administration, in its Annual Report, wrote that the "effect of the incredible caseload pressure in New York City Criminal Court is profoundly troubling." (26) Just over ten years ago, referring to New York City's Criminal Court, a prominent legal ethicist, Harry I. Subin, concluded that the Court was "[h]opelessly awash in a sea of cases" and "unable to administer justice." (27) Presently, the State's Chief Judge has expressed concern about the significant backlogs caused by quality-of-life policing. (28)

At the core of this decades-long hue and cry over caseloads is a concern for justice--for individualized justice--and a fear that massive caseloads unacceptably compromise the opportunity for that individualized justice. Implicit in the criticism is the acknowledgement that as case loads rise, court resources fail to rise commensurately. Thus, the equation is simple. Time is limited and higher numbers result in each professional in the criminal justice system having less time to devote to the people involved in each case, whether it be defendant, victim, complainant, or family members. This, in turn, results in professionals having to place a premium on strategies that increase efficiency rather than justice. The end result: rote, routinized, and perfunctory treatment of people and processing of matters important to defendants, victims, their families, and the public.

Yet, individualized justice is a core principle of due process and of our criminal justice system. (29) Judges are required to impose sentences based on individualized assessments of each case. (30) This is also central to the prosecutor's role: "[T]he capacity of prosecutorial discretion to provide individualized justice is 'firmly entrenched in American law." (31) The broad discretion given to prosecutors in deciding who to charge and what to charge allows for individualized justice. (32) And criminal defense attorneys certainly must represent the individual interests of each, client? (33)

As to public perception, the terms used to describe that which is antithetical to individual justice--assembly-line justice, wholesale justice--are inherently pejorative and inimical to our system of justice. There is deemed to be a baseline unfairness in a system that does not treat each case individually, thereby undermining public faith in the system's effectiveness. (34)

It may be that rapid, efficient case processing is endemic to a system that hears "minor" criminal cases. However, "[t]here will always be too many cases for many of the participants in the system since most of them have a strong interest in being some place other than in court." (35) And this includes defendants who find that the cost, including numerous court appearances, of litigating a criminal case in New York City is simply too high? (36)

The traditional attitude that misdemeanors are low-stakes Cases (37) favors a system that values rapid, efficient case processing. After all, thirty percent of misdemeanor cases will result in an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal? (38) In addition, most defendants will not serve additional jail time beyond the twenty-four hour arrest-to-arraignment time. (39) Moreover, it is arguable that the problem-solving courts that have proliferated in New York City in recent years siphon off the case types, such as domestic violence, most in need of individual attention. (40)

In considering the calculus between stakes and the individualized attention required on the part of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, the growing number of collateral consequences for misdemeanor arrests and convictions must be considered. Collateral consequences have, beginning in the mid-1980s, grown in number and severity, and have continued to impact more and more people as the number of arrests and criminal convictions rose. (41) The consequences of a criminal conviction that in the past were almost exclusively limited to the criminal court sanction now have the potential to lead to devastating civil consequences, wholly outside the control of criminal court. For example, in 1996 and 1998, Congress passed two laws that gave discretion to local public housing agencies to deny eligibility to anyone with a criminal background. (42) In New York, a person convicted of a simple disorderly conduct violation is presumptively ineligible for public housing for two years. (43) In 1998, Congress passed the Higher Education Act that suspends eligibility for federal student loans, grants, or work assistance to students convicted of a drug-related offense. (44) This includes a conviction for a marijuana...