Cannataro gives judiciary address as chief judge search continues

Acting Chief Judge Anthony Cannataro gives his State of the Judiciary speech on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023. Photo by David Handschuh/UCS

By Jacob Kaye

It’s unlikely Acting Chief Judge Anthony Cannataro thought he’d be giving the court system’s State of the Judiciary speech several months ago – but on Tuesday, he did just that. 

Speaking from the Court of Appeals building in Albany, Cannataro, for the first time, addressed the entirety of the state’s court system for the annual address. Cannataro, who has been temporarily serving as chief judge since the fall of last year, was to be replaced prior to Tuesday’s speech. However, the State Senate’s rejection last month of Governor Kathy Hochul’s chief judge nominee, Hector LaSalle, left Cannataro with at least several more months serving as the top judge in New York State. 

LaSalle was present on Tuesday, sitting alongside the other presiding justices in the state’s Appellate Divisions, as well as acting Chief Administrative Judge Tamiko Amaker. The presiding justice in the Appellate Division, Second Department received the lengthiest round of applause given by the audience during Tuesday’s address. 

“Presiding Justice LaSalle has dedicated his career to serving the public and our courts – we are lucky to have him as a jurist and as the administrative head of the Second Department,” Cannataro said toward the end of his speech. “I am personally deeply honored by his presence here today.”

Appearing to reference the complex and bitter battle that surrounded LaSalle’s nomination process, Cannataro opted to use the final moments of his speech to decry what he says are pressures on the judiciary to fall in line with the “headwinds of public opinion.”

“Since its founding, New York's judiciary and the court system has supported the essential pillars of our democracy by delivering fair and impartial justice without regard to political persuasion,” the acting chief judge said. 

“That is not to say that the law does not advance or that it does not progress with society or modern values – surely it does,” he added. “But we must be cognizant of our motivations and our role in the tricameral system of government. We must stick to reasoned determinations and resist any temptation or pressure for outcome-oriented decision making.”

LaSalle was heavily scrutinized by Democratic members of the State Senate, unions and a number of advocacy groups for past decisions he had signed onto or issued himself. A number of lawmakers also expressed concern that they believed that he would continue in the tradition of former Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, providing a decisive vote to the court’s four-member conservative majority, which Cannataro is a part of. 

His hearing before the Senate’s Judiciary Committee lasted nearly five hours – one of the longest chief judge nomination hearings in history. His ultimate rejection – which came after a Republican member of the committee filed a lawsuit – was also historic. LaSalle was the first chief judge nominee to be voted down by the Senate. 

Though the next leader of the state’s court system has yet to be determined, Cannataro said Tuesday that he was heartened by judges and court staffs’ efforts to keep the courts running throughout the past year. 

“Although we have experienced uncertainty over the last six months regarding the ongoing transition in court leadership, I am proud to say that our courts are open and operational,” he said. “Our judicial and non-judicial personnel continue to deliver high-quality justice to all who enter New York's courthouses and our experienced administrative and supervising judges are hard at work, ensuring that we are meeting appropriate benchmarks as we move further into 2023.”

Pandemic rebound

Tuesday’s address was the first State of the Judiciary speech given in-person since the start of the pandemic. 

During his speech, Cannataro noted that the past year in the courts had been marked by transition – both in leadership and in the court’s capacity to get through cases previously hampered by the pandemic. 

According to the acting chief judge, New York’s criminal courts conducted over 2,100 trials last year, a nearly 70 percent increase in trials when compared to 2021. Over half of those trials were for felony matters, he said. 

In New York City Criminal Courts specifically, around 2,700 cases have been resolved since the start of the pandemic. But backlogs remain.

There are around 81,000 backlogged cases in New York City’s Family Courts, around 21,000 in New York City’s Criminal Courts and around 12,000 in New York City’s Criminal Supreme Courts, the acting chief administrative judge recently told the legislature during a budget hearing. 

Cannataro also made note of the city’s top count gun charge program, which aims to speed up cases in which the top count against a defendant is a gun charge. The program was started by former Queens Administrative Judge George Grasso and has continued under Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Deborah Kaplan. 

Since April 2022, the city’s criminal courts have brought more than 2,600 cases to disposition, Cannataro said. Though 1,700 new gun cases have been added to the courts’ calendars in the past year, overall gun cases have been reduced by around 33 percent.

To keep up the pace, Cannataro announced on Tuesday that judges will be receiving training in how to replicate the top count gun cases program in an effort to resolve some of the oldest criminal cases where defendants are incarcerated. 

“In the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, our Criminal and Civil Courts made remarkable strides in clearing backlogs, reducing the numbers of cases pending and minimizing delays – unfortunately, the sudden onset of the pandemic in 2020 caused setbacks to that progress,” the acting chief judge said.  

“In 2021, we forged ahead with hybrid operations firmly in place, and we worked towards restoring our in-person operations to pre-pandemic levels,” he added. “With the resumption of full trial capacity late last summer, our assent from pandemic-related backlogs picked up steam in 2022 and our courts resolved more than 2.1 million cases across the state, delivering justice to millions of New Yorkers in the process.”

Staffing troubles remain

Even with the caseload strides made in the past year, Cannataro noted that a major hurdle remained – staffing. 

Like most municipal entities in New York, the state’s court system has seen high rates of attrition since the onset of the pandemic. 

The courts face a shortage of clerks, court officers, court reporters and 18-B attorneys who do not work for the court system but serve as an essential piece to ensuring cases are heard. 

“Attrition combined with a temporary hiring freeze during the pandemic has left us struggling to adequately staff our courtrooms,” Cannataro said. “Needless to say, staffing shortages slow down our dockets and burden our already strained workforce.”

In the Office of Court Administration's recent budget request submitted to the governor and legislature, court officials asked for additional funds to hire non-judicial staff. 

Cannataro said that the court system is looking to fill 800 open positions, which would put the courts back in line with pre-pandemic staffing numbers. The court system has also requested the funds to create 270 additional non-judicial positions. 

The acting chief judge also announced that for the first time in more than a dozen years, there will be three new academy classes of court officers. 

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Cannataro said. “It is imperative that we have sufficient staff support for our courts to deliver justice expeditiously.”

The acting chief judge also noted the troubles faced by 18-B attorneys, who have not seen a permanent raise to their hourly rate in nearly 20 years. 

18-B attorneys, who provide legal representation to indigent defendants and children, have seen their caseloads sky rocket in recent years as their colleagues have left 18-B panels for higher paying prospects. 

In several recently filed lawsuits, all of which are making their way through the courts, the attorneys have alleged that the state has failed in its constitutional duty to provide representation to defendants by not increasing the attorneys’ pay. 

One of those suits has resulted in a temporary injunction, and 18-B attorneys operating in New York City have seen their pay double in the past year. 

“The services these article 18-B attorneys provide to their clients protect the vital rights of indigent defendants and safeguard the important interests of New York's families,” Cannataro said. “In recent years, we have experienced a significant decline in the number of attorneys participating in our 18-B assigned counsel programs. But today, prospects for an increase in compensation rates look better than they have in the past few years.”

The acting chief judge also commented on the city’s Right to Counsel program, which connects low-income tenants facing eviction proceedings with an attorney. The program has been under massive strain over the past year, and legal services providers have, at times, had to cut off their intake in order to service the clients already on their dockets. 

A number of Right to Counsel groups repeatedly have called on Cannataro to order Housing Court administrators to slow down the calendering of cases in order to ensure that all low-income tenants are connected with attorneys. Last year, Cannataro was speaking at a New York State Bar Association event when he was interrupted by a group of attorneys protesting his handling of the Right to Counsel program. The event was canceled not long after it began. 

On Tuesday, Cannataro put the struggles of the program onto the legal service providers and said that he wouldn’t order Housing Courts to slow their docket. 

“This past year, over 104,000 residential eviction filings were filed in the New York City Housing Courts, but participating legal service providers declined to represent thousands of tenants in large part due to a shortage of attorneys and caseloads that we know often leave them feeling overworked, underpaid, and emotionally drained,” he said.

“The law simply does not permit our housing courts to grind to a halt,” he added. “We are committed to supporting creative strategies to augment the availability of legal representation in housing cases to enable the speedy resolution of disputes and to minimize resort to eviction. In the meantime, our Housing Courts will continue to assist tenants and landlords in a fair and timely manner.”

Cannataro’s State of the Judiciary given on Tuesday will likely be his last. 

Now that LaSalle has been formally rejected, the Commission on Judicial Nominations has begun their search for a group of seven candidates to recommend to the governor – those recommendations will likely come later this month. 

The governor will then select one of those candidates and send them to the legislature for confirmation or rejection.