the new york times: Speedy Trials Return to a Bronx Court Known for Delays and Dysfunction

People facing misdemeanor charges in the Bronx will have the ability to make a formal request to have their cases tracked for a speedy trial under a court settlement signed on Thursday between the state court system and defendants who filed a class-action suit over intractable delays and dysfunction in the Bronx Criminal Court system.

The Bronx Defenders had sued in 2016 on behalf of several defendants who claimed the endemic delays in resolving misdemeanor cases in the Bronx violated their constitutional right to a speedy trial.

“Waits for trial were so long that it effectively made the right to a trial meaningless,” said Scott Levy, a special counsel at the Bronx Defenders and one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The settlement of the case, Trowbridge et al v. DiFiore, was signed on Thursday afternoon by attorneys from the Bronx Defenders and the New York attorney general’s office. It mandates that the courts produce quarterly reports about how long cases are taking to resolve and establishes a formal process to request a speedy trial for defendants whose cases are languishing.

Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court in Manhattan must still sign off on the agreement.

The federal class action suit was filed in May 2016 in the Southern District of New York, three years after The New York Times documented the endemic delays plaguing the Bronx courts and the havoc they wrought in the lives of misdemeanor defendants. Under the settlement, the plaintiffs will have the right to resume legal proceedings at any time during the next four years if they determine delays and backlogs in the Bronx criminal courts begin to balloon again.

Delays in Bronx misdemeanor cases have dropped significantly in the two years since the civil suit was filed, as Chief Judge Janet DiFiore made a concerted effort to cut down the backlog of misdemeanor cases.

Judge DiFiore put Judge George Grasso, who had won praise for streamlining arraignments in Brooklyn, in charge of the Bronx Criminal Court. Under Judge Grasso’s supervision, the number of misdemeanor cases pending for more than a year fell to 509 in July, down from 2,433 in June 2016.

“Case backlogs have and continue to drop in each and every judicial district both in New York City and statewide,” said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the court system.

Delays in bringing cases to trial often upend the lives of some Bronx residents, who have to juggle court dates they cannot miss with work, family obligations and medical emergencies, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.

David Deowsarran, a 29-year-old metal worker from the Bronx, is typical of the people lawyers for the defense say the settlement will help. He was charged with misdemeanor drunken driving after officers pulled him over in March 2016 as he was on his way to pick his brother up from a bar on Westchester Avenue. The officers said he smelled like alcohol, he had bloodshot eyes and his “movements were lethargic and slow,” according to a criminal compliant.

But Mr. Deowsarran denied he was drunk and refused to take a breathalyzer test. He was formally charged in Bronx Criminal Court on March 13, 2016, and released. His case took two years to come to trial. He showed up for 22 court dates. On March 16, Mr. Deowsarran finally was acquitted in a bench trial.

“I had to miss a lot of time from work, and I was afraid that I would be fired for missing so many days,” Mr. Deowsarran said. “Missing so many days also caused me to lose hours, so my paycheck would be less.” He missed roughly a month of work because of court dates and found himself missing bill payments.

In addition, Mr. Deowsarran’s license was suspended from March 2016 until December 2016. His commute to his job at Hi-Tech Metals in Maspeth, Queens, which took 30 minutes by car, took up to two hours on the subway and bus.

Mr. Levy of the Bronx Defenders said Mr. Deowsarran’s troubles while waiting for trial were common, and such delays fell harder on poor defendants, many of whom are minorities. “Our clients were losing jobs, missing medical appointments, having child care emergencies,” Mr. Levy said. “That is the harm that really propelled this litigation.”

Written by Ali Winston, The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/nyregion/bronx-misdemeanor-backlog-settlement.html