Statement from Nicholas J. Wachinski, Esquire, Executive Director, American Bail Coalition
The death of Kalief Browder is a tragedy. However, policymakers must focus on the reforms to the criminal justice system that will help prevent against these types of tragedies. The 40,000 men and women who the American Bail Coalition represents want nothing more than to partner in that effort.
To accomplish this, reforms to the juvenile justice system and the necessary speedy trial enforcement must be the focus.
To think that a 16 year-old boy would sit for three years in an adult correctional facility with no trial is a travesty. The counter measure to ensure this never happens again, is to increase the age of juvenile justice supervision from 16 years old to 18 years old. Further, no child should be required to provide bail when a parent or guardian with a meaningful relationship to the defendant will guarantee compliance as required by the Court.
The United States Constitution, the New York State Constitution, and common sense dictate that the trial of any person accused of a crime must happen in a speedy fashion. No explanation has been or could be offered to substantiate the three-year delay that Kalief endured. Reforms must include ensuring that no person will go without trial for an extended period of time.
While advocates of bail reform and the bail industry will oppose one another in due course, now is the time to focus on meaningful and real reform truly driven by what actually happened in this case. Anything less trivializes the loss of this young man.
Excerpts from The New Yorker, Before the Law Written by Jennifer Gonnerman, Published October 6, 2014
Prison Overcrowding
Browder had entered the legal system through the Bronx criminal courts, which are chronically overwhelmed. Last year, the Times, in an extended exposé, described them as “crippled” and among the most backlogged in the country. One reason is budgetary. There are not nearly enough judges and court staff to handle the workload; in 2010, Browder’s case was one of 5,695 felonies that the Bronx District Attorney’s office prosecuted.
Speedy Trial
Many states have so-called speedy-trial laws, which require trials to start within a certain time frame. New York State’s version is slightly different, and is known as the “ready rule.” This rule stipulates that all felony cases (except homicides) must be ready for trial within six months of arraignment, or else the charges can be dismissed. In practice, however, this time limit is subject to technicalities. The clock stops for many reasons—for example, when defense attorneys submit motions before trial—so that the amount of time that is officially held to have elapsed can be wildly different from the amount of time that really has. In 2011, seventy-four percent of felony cases in the Bronx were older than six months
The Bronx courts are so clogged that when a lawyer asks for a one-week adjournment the next court date usually doesn’t happen for six weeks or more. As long as a prosecutor has filed a Notice of Readiness, however, delays caused by court congestion don’t count toward the number of days that are officially held to have elapsed. Every time a prosecutor stood before a judge in Browder’s case, requested a one-week adjournment, and got six weeks instead, this counted as only one week against the six-month deadline. Meanwhile, Browder remained on Rikers.
Solitary Confinement
In recent years, the use of solitary confinement has spread in New York’s jails. Between 2007 and mid-2013, the total number of solitary-confinement beds on Rikers increased by more than sixty percent, and a report last fall found that nearly twenty-seven percent of the adolescent inmates were in solitary. “I think the department became severely addicted to solitary confinement,” Daniel Selling, who served as the executive director of mental health for New York City’s jails, told me in April; he had quit his job two weeks earlier. “It’s a way to control an environment that feels out of control—lock people in their cell,” he said. “Adolescents can’t handle it. Nobody could handle that.” (In March, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed a new jails commissioner, Joseph Ponte, who promised to “end the culture of excessive solitary confinement.”)
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