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The Courts Stand Indicted in New York City

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The Courts Stand Indicted in New York City Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 68 Article 8 Issue 2 June Summer 1977 The ourC ts Stand Indicted in New York City A. Smith H. Pollack Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons Recommended Citation A. Smith, H. Pollack, The ourC ts Stand Indicted in New York City, 68 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 252 (1977) This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 68, No. 2 Copyright © 1977 by Northwestern University School of Law Printed in U.S.A. COMMENTARY THE COURTS STAND INDICTED IN NEW YORK CITY A. SMITH* AND H. POLLACK**t In the past few years the New York City the eyes of the public, the New York courts courts, traditionally among the most venerated stand accused: and respected institutions of local government, 1. Judges permit plea bargaining to such an have increasingly been subjected to severe crit- extent that serious felonies are reduced to icism. 1 These criticisms reflect the bitterness, relatively minor charges and trivial punishment anger and even contempt of the public for is meted out to dangerous offenders. The re- what is perceived as the inefficiency, laziness sult is that criminals are freed within a short or callous stupidity of judges, who are consid- period of time to return to the community and ered responsible for putting dangerous offend- repeat their violent acts. ers back on the streets. Public criticism has 2. Judges indulge in excessive plea bargain- come from all parts of the political spectrum, ing because they are lazy and uncaring, or but the criticism is remarkably consisteit. In because they are so insulated from the realities of street life that they do not realize what they * Professor of Sociology, John Jay College of are doing, or because as "liberal" political ideo- Criminal Justice, New York, New York logues they consistently elevate the rights of ** Professor of Government, John Jay College of the defendant over the rights of the commu- Criminal Justice, New York, New York nity. t A Note on Sources: 3. Sentences are wildly disparate, without The data for this article were drawn primarily from three sources: contemporary newspaper ac- rhyme or reason. This is largely due to the counts; official reports and budgets of the City of personal failings of the judges. New York and its relevant criminal justice agencies; 4. Judges spend too little time on the bench. and extensive personal interviews with the leading They are frequently late or absent, and thus criminal justice practitioners in the city. Our research permit large backlogs of cases to build up in was centered on New York, Bronx and Kings Coun- ties in New York City, since these counties have the their courts. heaviest criminal case loads. Among those inter- How true are these charges? Are dangerous viewed were the district attorneys of these three persons released into the community by un- counties, the supervising judges and a dozen of the thinking courts? Are judges as inferior a lot of sitting judges of the criminal parts of the supreme courts of these counties (Note: In New York, the public servants as recent criticisms make them supreme court is the lowest state-wide trial court. - appear to be? Ed.), the Chief Executive Officer of the Courts of I the City of New York, the Attorney-in-Charge of the Legal Aid Society of New York City, several senior Unhappily, some of the charges are true. officials of the New York City Police Department, the Deputy Commissioner of the New York State Dangerous persons are released into the com- Department of Correctional Services and a number munity largely through plea-bargaining, 2 but of other officials in miscellaneous categories. These interviews were remarkable in two respects: first for I "Plea Bargains Resolve 8 of 10 Homicide Cases," the candor with which those interviewed spoke (each New York Times, Jan. 27, 1975, at 1; "Lower Courts interviewee was promised that nothing he said would Are 8ettling 80% of City Felony Cases," New York be attributed to him by name); and second for the Times, Feb. 14, 1975, at 1. The thrust of these articles degree of consensus which emerged, both as to the is that the courts are releasing dangerous offenders state of the criminaljustice system and the immediate into the community by accepting guilty pleas to lesser steps which should be taken to alleviate the existing offenses and then imposing minimal sentences for problems. these offenses. The effect is to put the criminal back I New York Times, Oct. 31, 1974, at 14. on the street almost immediately. 1977] NEW YORK CITY COURTS the competence, honesty and integrity of the judges This disparity between the number ofjudges on the bench have very little to do with the situation. and the number of potential cases would by Were every judge in the criminal courts a itself be sufficient to seriously overload the Solomon who worked 60 hours a week, many courts. The situation is, unfortunately, further of the abuses which the public rightly deplores compounded by the fact that a felony trial in would still continue to flourish. The disastrous 1974 is a far different procedure from the state of the New York City courts is caused not felony trial of 1952. Due in large part to a by the personal failings of the judges, but by series of Supreme Court rulings which ex- numbers: the number of cases compared to tended rights to indigent defendants which the number of courts and related facilities had previously been exercised only by the well- which are available to handle them, to-do, felony trial procedure has become sub- The arithmetic is simple. From 1952 to 1974 stantially more complex and time-consuming. the total number of regular, housing and tran- Even in 1952, all felony defendants in New sit policemen in New York City increased from York State were represented by counsel, but 19,450 to 36,574, or approximately 88%. During the role of the defense attorney has changed the same period of time the number of judges markedly since then. Pursuant to the Supreme sitting in the misdemeanor and felony courts Court's decisions in Miranda v. Arizona,5 United rose from 91 to 190,' or approximately 108%. States v. Wade,6 and Terry v. Ohio,7 defense While the number of police and the number of attorneys can and do challenge the admissibility judges increased in roughly similar proportion, of confessions, eye witness identifications, the the number of felony arrests rose from 16,957 legality of arrests and attendant searches, and to 101,748: a 500% increase. Another way of the propriety of many types of police proce- saying this is to note that in 1952 every police- dures." In previous years, neither assigned man statistically made .89 felony arrests; in 5 436 1974, each officer was responsible 384 U.S. (1966). for 2,8 felony 68388 U.S. 218 (1967). arrests. The felony workload of the criminal 7392 U.S. 1 (1968). courts thus increased six-fold at the same time 1 In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the United that the number of judges available to cope States Supreme Court held that illegally seized evi- 4 with the workload barely doubled. dence could not be used to obtain a criminal convic- tion in a state court. Since Mapp, the Court has attempted to define the scope of this exclusionary 3 In New York City there aie two courts of criminal rule. jurisdiction: the Criminal Court, which handles mis- Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court ex- demeanors, and the Supreme Court, which handles tended the rule to cover not only physical evidence felonies. In 1974, 92 judges were assigned to the as in Mapp, but also confessions obtained during Criminal Court, and 66 were assigned to the Supreme custodial interrogation without the presence of coun- Court. However, since the Supreme Court felony sel, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); identi, load was so great, 16judges from the Criminal Court fications made at an improperly conducted line-up, were transferred to temporary duty in the Supreme United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 318 (1967); and Court, as were three judges from the Civil Court and evidence obtained through illegal eavesdropping and 29 judges from the Court of Claims. Altogether, wiretapping, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 there were 190judges to handle all the criminal cases (1967), and Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41 (1967). in New York City, but only 66 were permanently as- At the same time, however, the Warren Court lowered signed to felony work. This contrasts with 23 so the standards for on-the-street police stops and assigned in 1952. searches from the traditional "probable cause" to 4 All figures relating to the number of police are "reasonable suspicion," Terry v. Ohio, 392 U,S. 1 taken from the ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE NEW YORK (1968), and also suggested in Davis v. Mississippi, 394 CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, and the ANNUAL EXPENSE U.S, 721 (1969), that mass fingerprinting aimed at BUDGETS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. The figures finding a criminal suspect might be permissible with relating to the number of judges come from the prior judicial sanction, The Warren Court substan- NEW YORK CITY EXPENSE BUDGET and the annual tially expanded the protection afforded defendants NEW YORK CITY OFFICIAL DIRECTORY (popularly in state cases, but balanced this protection by making known as the "Green Book").
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