Criminal jury trials resume in plexiglass-partitioned Queens courtroom
/
The bench, encased in plexiglass. Photos by David Brand
By David Brand
A man named Robert Harris, accused of a 2018 home invasion, stood trial in Queens Criminal Court Thursday.
Harris’ attorney, Michael Anastasiou, prepared to deliver his opening statement to the 12 jurors and four alternates. So did Queens prosecutor Gregory Lasak, just like the pre-COVID days.
But not really.
Queens’ first jury trial in nearly nine months began inside a remodeled courtroom, with parties separated by layers of plexiglass, jurors scattered across the gallery and TVs and microphones required to broadcast proceedings to everyone inside the cavernous ceremonial room.
Other features will give the proceedings a decidedly different feel. Take client-attorney communication.
If Harris wants to ask Anastasiou a question, he’ll have to pick up a smart phone and chat with his lawyer seated on the other side of a plexiglass barrier. The design makes the attorney table look like a penalty box.
Or consider the often theatrical, in-your-face style of opening statements. If Lasak wants to drive home a point, he’ll have to gesture from a microphone-equipped podium looking out at the gallery, where the jurors sit spaced apart in eight rows.
Prosecutors can face the judge or the jury, who will sit in in gallery.
Witnesses will testify with a camera in their face broadcasting their reactions on at least five large screens around the courtroom.
“The broadcast will actually be better because the jurors will be able to see the witness better,” said Justice Ira Margulis, who allowed the Eagle to tour and photograph the courtroom before the jurors arrived Thursday morning.
The jury trial restart, coming amid yet another recent spike in Central Queens COVID cases, has remained a contentious topic in the Queens legal community. Many public defenders and court staffers say it puts visitors, defendants and personnel in danger of COVID exposure.
A few staff members in the Queens District Attorney’s Office have recently tested positive for the illness, forcing at least two judges, several court staffers and a handful of prosecutors and defense attorneys to quarantine. A jury trial in the Bronx was suspended last week after three staffers and an interpreter tested positive for COVID-19.
Justice Ira Margulis.
Despite those concerns, only two of the dozens of Queens residents in the jury selection pool asked to be disqualified because they feared contracting COVID, Margulis said.
“The rest gave the usual reasons — they couldn’t get off work, they care for an elderly relative,” Margulis said. “I asked jurors how they feel about the protocols and they all gave a thumbs up.”
Jurors will sit staggered in the gallery.
Margulis expects the trial to wrap up by late next week. Until then, jurors will submit a brief health screening and get their temperature taken each morning when they enter the courthouse.
“And everyone will be wearing their masks properly,” Margulis said.
The defendant and his attorney will communicate via smartphone because they sit on opposite sides of a partition.
