Since October, state and federal court officials have taken extraordinary measures to restart criminal trials in New York City. They have constructed plexiglass boxes with special air filters in court. They have asked witnesses to testify in face shields and have spread jurors out in courtroom galleries.
But those efforts have not stopped the virus from disrupting nearly every step of the process. The state and federal courts in the city have been able to complete only nine criminal jury trials since the pandemic hit in March, officials said. Last year, there were about 800 criminal trials in the city.
For months, the logistical problems have threatened the ability of hundreds of defendants to secure their constitutional right to a speedy trial. Now, as a second wave of the virus threatens the region, the delays are only worsening — and officials foresee the backlog of unresolved cases continuing to grow.
Last month, the chief judge in New York State halted new jury trials until further notice because of surging virus cases. More than 400 defendants have been waiting inside New York City jails for over two years for their cases to be resolved, according to the mayor’s office.
“Is it fair for people to be languishing in pretrial detention and presumed innocent with no prospect of a trial in the future for them?” said New York’s chief administrative judge, Lawrence K. Marks. “A criminal justice system cannot be, in any sense of the word, fully functioning, if it is not conducting jury trials.”
And in the past week, the federal courts in the city also announced that all trials would be suspended until mid-January.
Some prosecutors, citing safety concerns, have pushed to delay trials because their witnesses live out of state or work in hospitals with Covid-19 patients. In other cases, prosecutors said the fears of catching the virus during trials had been overblown.
The problems in New York have been mirrored across the country. Federal judges in Nebraska, Nevada, Colorado and several other jurisdictions recently suspended jury trials in response to rising virus cases. A court in Austin, Texas, held the state’s first virtual criminal jury trial in August.
In New York City courts, the challenge of preventing the virus’s spread is magnified by the dense population. In normal times, clerks, court officers and lawyers squeeze into courtroom galleries and line the crowded hallways, waiting for cases to be called.
In November alone, at least three dozen people who appeared in eight different criminal courthouses in the city tested positive for the virus, according to the state’s court administrators.
Many judges have been eager to begin trials, worried about violating the constitutional rights of people charged with crimes. Without speedy trials, jails become overcrowded, evidence grows stale and witnesses’ memories fade.
Early in the pandemic, after New York City officials released hundreds of inmates, the city’s jail population dropped to its lowest level since the 1940s. But the population has increased again — to 4,669 people last month — raising fears about the virus spreading among inmates and jail staff. A majority of the inmates are awaiting trial, according to the Center for Court Innovation, a criminal justice nonprofit.
But one of the biggest hurdles to restarting trials has been finding defense lawyers who are willing to do them.
At a federal hearing in Manhattan, Susan Kellman, a defense lawyer, said she felt unsafe visiting her client in jail, which hindered their ability to prepare for a drug-trafficking trial that had been scheduled for October. Her client has been adamant about going to trial quickly, she said, and regularly screams at her on the telephone.
“I’m a single parent. I have two kids. I’m really not ready to die,” she told the judge, who rescheduled the trial.
The virus has infiltrated the city’s courtrooms in ways that threaten both the health of those inside and the constitutional rights of defendants.
“We are concerned for both victims and defendants that the wheels of justice continue to move,” said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, chief assistant to the Manhattan district attorney. “Languishing court cases is not good for anybody.”
The delays have been frustrating for people like Halley Hopkins, who filed a police report over a year ago accusing her husband of beating and choking her until she was unconscious. Her husband has been out on bail while awaiting trial in Queens. Though a judge has ordered him not to contact her, she remains uneasy.
“My whole life is on hold,” Ms. Hopkins, 41, said.
NYT Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/nyregion/courts-covid.html