Courts continue to cut through gun case backlog
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Mayor Eric Adams called for the city’s courts to prioritize gun cases, an initiative already underway and being led by Administrative Judge for Criminal Matters in Queens Supreme Court George Grasso. Eagle file photo by David Brand
By Jacob Kaye
As part of his plan to curb gun violence in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams on Monday called on the courts to give a renewed focus to gun cases.
In addition to requesting that the city’s five district attorneys move gun cases to the front of their docket, he said that he’d work “with the courts and chief judge to see if we increase the number of judges who are part of the State’s gun violence initiative.”
“We need every judge we can get hearing these cases and helping us move through this immense backlog,” Adams said.
The mayor’s plan comes after several high profile shootings – including a shooting that led to the deaths of two NYPD officers on Friday – and calls for the reintroduction of the NYPD’s plainclothes unit and a scaling back of several recently passed criminal justice reforms, in addition to several changes in the courts.
There are currently around 4,000 cases with gun charges backlogged throughout New York State, according to the mayor.
However, in New York City, Criminal Court judges, district attorneys and defense attorneys are already engaged in an initiative to lower the backlog of cases where the top charge against a defendant is a gun charge. The initiative, which began in August 2021, has already led to a sizable reduction in the court’s backlog, according to court officials.
The top count gun charge initiative, led by Administrative Judge for Criminal Matters in Queens Supreme Court George Grasso, has seen the city’s backlog of top count gun cases reduced by a little less than 800 cases over the course of five months, according to the judge.
When the program began in August, there were 384 pending top count gun cases in Queens – there are now 180, as of Jan. 24.
Similar reductions have been seen in all five boroughs. Richmond County has seen a reduction from 23 to 9 cases, Manhattan has gone from 135 backlogged cases to 106, the Bronx had 317 cases in August and now has 191 and Kings County, which had the highest number of backlogged cases, dropped from 943 to 519 cases.
The program requires DAs and attorneys to prioritize cases where a gun charge is the top charge. In each of the five boroughs, there are several Supreme Court justices that are part of the top count gun team. Their job is to “drive as many pleas and as many suppression hearings that they can possibly drive with these cases, as they come in,” Grasso said.
In Queens, the top count gun team is comprised of Justices Ira Margulis, John Zoll, Gia Morris and Cassandra Mullen.
If a plea isn’t possible, the case is sent to an administrative judge, who will assign the case to an available judge for trial as soon as possible.
It’s unclear whether or not Adams was talking specifically about the city’s initiative when discussing his Blueprint to End Gun Violence plan this week and his office did not respond to request for comment for this story.
In his plan, Adams asks DAs to take actions they are already taking under the current initiative.
“If a District Attorney’s office pursues a charge related to guns or gun violence, moving it to the front of the docket – much the same way hospitals triage patients with life threatening conditions ahead of those less in need – that would serve as a crucial step towards getting guns off our streets much faster,” the plan reads.
A spokesperson for Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said that she’s been prioritizing gun cases since first taking office.
“Since District Attorney Katz took office in January 2020, working with the NYPD to thwart gun violence has been and continues to be one of her top priorities, as evidenced by the number of takedowns and buybacks in Queens and her sharp focus on ghost guns,” the spokesperson said. “We have also worked closely with the Office of Court Administration to prioritize and expedite gun cases. DA Katz is ready to participate in any meeting the Mayor proposes to strategize and enhance coordination of a comprehensive response to gun violence.”
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the OCA, said that if the court’s initiative continues to be successful, the courts would consider expanding the program to include more judges, “if we feel that it would be necessary,” adding that “there are a lot of moving parts which contribute to the case moving along that are not in our control.”
With COVID-19 cases decreasing after the recent holiday surge and the renewed focus on gun cases, Grasso said that he believes the city’s courts will begin to see a higher number of trials start and be completed in the coming months.
“Our ability to tackle hearings and trials in Supreme Court, I anticipate, is going to increase quite substantially over the next several weeks,” Grasso said. “I think it's a time to be very optimistic on many fronts.”
