City claims Rikers receivership isn’t needed with new commissioner at helm
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Attorneys for New York City said in a federal court filing on Tuesday that a federal takeover of Rikers Island isn’t needed now that Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the recently-appointed Department of Correction commissioner, is leading the agency. Maginley-Liddie was appointed to the role in December by Mayor Eric Adams. File photo via NYC mayor’s office
By Jacob Kaye
Attorneys for the city on Tuesday told a federal judge that Rikers Island should remain in the hands of the city as a new, reform-minded commissioner takes a stab at curbing violent conditions at the notorious jail complex.
The long-awaited response from the city and its Department of Correction was filed after the Legal Aid Society officially laid out its case in November for why the city should be held in contempt of court for allegedly failing to meet the requirements of the wide-ranging 2015 consent judgment in the ongoing civil rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York, which centered around the abuse of detainees at the hands of correctional officers.
As a consequence of the alleged contempt, the public defense firm called for federal Judge Laura Swain, who is overseeing the case, to institute what’s known as a federal receiver, or a court-appointed authority that could potentially assume the day-to-day responsibility of running the city’s jails, stripping authority away from the city.
But in its nearly 50-page response to the Legal Aid Society, the city – as expected – said a receiver wasn’t necessary to improve conditions on Rikers Island, where over two dozen detainees have died in the past two years. In fact, that work is largely already underway, the city claimed.
“A receiver is an extraordinary remedy to be imposed only when no lesser alternatives are adequate to the task,” the city’s filing reads. “As the record shows, that is not the current situation in DOC facilities.”
Much of the city’s argument against federal receivership rested on the shoulders of Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the commissioner of the Department of Correction appointed to the role by Mayor Eric Adams in mid-December.
Though never explicitly said by the mayor, the commissioner, or other top officials in the Adams administration, Maginley-Liddie’s appointment was largely seen as an effort to stave off receivership.
Not only did Maginley-Liddie take over the job from Louis Molina, the former commissioner who frequently bucked the authority of the Nunez federal monitor tracking conditions on Rikers on behalf of Swain, but she also spent the entirety of her eight-year career at the DOC working on the agency’s compliance with the Nunez consent judgment.
When announcing Maginley-Liddie’s appointment in December, Adams – who has also publicly questioned the authority of the federal monitor – said that the city should be left alone to fix the jail complex.
“We want the challenge,” the mayor said. “We can get it right. Rikers can be fixed.”
Now, with the city’s arguments against receivership officially filed in court, it appears that Maginley-Liddie’s appointment rests at the heart of the city’s belief that it can turn Rikers around.
“A federal takeover is no magic bullet,” the filing reads. “Only hard work will achieve the needed reforms, and, under Commissioner Maginley-Liddie and with the monitor’s input, DOC has been doing, and will continue to do, the work.”
“Well-reasoned improvements in the city’s jails are underway,” the filing continued. “The imposition of a receiver would introduce uncertainty and potentially remove an effective commissioner from her role, frustrating DOC’s current progress.”
While attorneys for the city noted that violence remains high on Rikers, it also claimed that the conditions at the infamous jail complex were no different than the conditions at jails across the U.S.
“We recognize, of course, that much work remains to be done to bring DOC up to the standard that we all want,” the city said. “But jails and prisons across the country are struggling to provide safe and humane conditions for those in their care.”
In a statement to the Eagle on Tuesday, the Legal Aid Society, which represents the plaintiff class in the case, said that it was “reviewing the city's submission, but nothing in these papers changes this reality: our clients in the jails continue to suffer and the city continues to fail them.”
“The Constitution demands more, and a receiver remains necessary to reform this dysfunctional system," a spokesperson for the firm added.
Though the call for receivership came to a head while the DOC was under the direction of Molina – who now serves as the assistant deputy mayor of public safety, a previously non-existent role that City Hall has yet to publicly define – the Legal Aid Society said the city’s contempt of the consent judgment extended well beyond any single commissioner.
“The levels of violence and brutality in the city jails that exist today were unimaginable when the consent judgment was entered in 2015, and the city has demonstrated through eight years of recalcitrance and defiance of court orders that it cannot and will not reform its unconstitutional practices,” Mary Lynne Werlwas, the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement at the time of the filing.
“A receiver with the authority and mandate to make the difficult decisions the city will not is needed to secure the progress that two administrations and multiple Correction commissioners have all failed to achieve, and protect the constitutional rights of all people incarcerated in New York City jails,” she added.
The over 100-page filing attempted to lay out the case for receivership, arguing that the DOC has “overwhelmingly” not complied with the heart of the consent judgment. Use of force incidents have continued, and the DOC hasn’t done much to hold staff accountable when they cross the line, the filing argued. The Legal Aid Society also argued that the DOC has generally failed to keep detainees safe on Rikers Island and that “the risk of severe harm in the jails is as imminent, if not more imminent, in the present moment as it was when the consent judgment was entered.”
Much of the argument for receivership made by the Legal Aid Society was pulled from the dozens of reports made by federal monitor Steve J. Martin, who was charged by the federal court to keep track of the DOC’s commitment to the consent judgment in 2015.
The monitor’s reports, particularly those issued in 2023, increasingly described a violent and chaotic jail complex whose leaders were becoming less and less willing to take direction from any attempted oversight.
Martin, who has been less explicit in his support of receivership than the Legal Aid Society, grew less trusting of the DOC and the Adams administration in 2023, expressing doubts about their efforts to adhere to court orders and the monitor’s own recommendations to make the jail complex safer.
“Interference, obfuscation, and deflection have become normalized, and yet another imminent leadership transition is expected to further impact an already unstable, erratic, and chaotic environment,” Martin said in a report issued in November, shortly after it was announced that Molina would be promoted to the new position within City Hall. “This has exacerbated the monitoring team’s concerns about the elevated risk of harm faced by those in custody and the staff who work in the jails on a daily basis.”
But Martin appeared to be slightly more optimistic about a Maginley-Liddie-led DOC.
“The monitor and the monitoring team have worked with Commissioner Maginley-Liddie for many years and have developed a good working relationship with her during this time,” the monitor said in a December report. “In her work at the department, the monitoring team has found the commissioner to be transparent and forthright.”
Despite the optimism, the monitoring team has yet to issue a report tracking conditions on Rikers in the months since Maginley-Liddie was appointed – the monitor’s next report is expected to be filed on April 11.
What comes next?
The Legal Aid Society will file its response to the city’s arguments on April 23. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who has also argued in support of receivership, will also file a response to the city that day.
After having several meetings, the city, Legal Aid Society and federal prosecutors will issue a joint status report on May 8. That report will come about a week before all parties will again appear before Swain at a May 15 status conference, which could potentially see a ruling on the receivership question.
Should Swain order a federal takeover of the jail complex, it’s not likely a receiver begins their work any time soon. It would likely take anywhere from several months to a year to define the role of a receiver.
The scope of a receiver’s powers, should one be implemented, could be relatively vast.
A receiver would likely have the power to hire and fire DOC personnel related to the implementation of the consent judgment. They would also likely not be required to operate within the bounds of the labor agreement currently in place between the city and the correctional officers’ union and would have the ability to negotiate a new contract with the union.
The DOC commissioner would likely still have some control over Rikers Island but would have the “powers granted to the receiver…suspended for the duration of the receivership,” according to the proposed receivership plan from the Legal Aid Society. However, the commissioner would be expected to “work closely with the receiver to facilitate the receiver’s ability to perform their duties.”
