Jury trials resume Monday in Queens. Here’s what you need to know.
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One trial will take place in the Long Island City Supreme Court building. Eagle file photo by Clarissa Sosin
By David Brand
Starting Monday, about 200 people from across Queens will be summoned to Borough Hall, a block from Central Queens’ red cluster zone, to sit inside a waiting room to see if they will be picked as potential panelists for the borough’s first jury trials in seven months.
Two Civil Supreme Court jury trials are scheduled to begin that day, the first in the borough since the state court system ceased most in-person operations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in mid-March.
Jury trials began earlier this week in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island, and Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said jury selection and trials outside the city have gone well.
“We are confident in our ability to safely and efficiently resume in-person jury trials,” DiFiore said during a weekly address to court personnel and attorneys.
Many lawyers and court staff in Queens say they remain wary of jury trials resuming, especially since people from across the borough will be gathering for jury selection in Central Queens, where COVID rates have risen in recent weeks.
“We all have some concerns about going forward, but we’ll take it one step at a time,” said Queens County Bar Association President Clifford Welden Monday.
Most other in-person proceedings have resumed in Queens over the past few months, including grand juries in criminal court and some civil bench trials, but none depend on as many people packed into the same place as jury selection.
In the pre-COVID days, hundreds of Queens residents would report to the Queens Civil Court building in response to their summonses each day. There they would wait to be assigned to jury selection for a trial at the Supreme Court building across the street, or they would plead their case for dismissal and go home.
Things will look much different Monday, however, said Queens County Clerk Audrey Pheffer.
First, there’s a location change. The Queens Civil Courthouse in Jamaica is already too crowded to handle dozens of additional people, Pheffer said.
Queens County Clerk Audrey Pheffer described what potential jurors can expect when they report Monday. Eagle file photo by David Brand
The jury room in Queens Borough Hall, typically reserved for people awaiting assignment to jury selection in Criminal Court, is more spacious and secluded, Pheffer said.
“It’s the least used space and we’re looking for less traffic,” she said. “You’re really not dealing with a lot of people there.”
Criminal jury trials are not scheduled to resume until the following week and Pheffer said she is not sure yet how the courts will accommodate additional potential jurors when those trials begin.
But on Monday, small cohorts of about 25 potential jurors will sit in different rooms in Borough Hall until the clerks call on them to visit the main jury room, Pheffer said. They will either be instructed to go home or assigned to jury selection for one of two trials taking place the next day.
The potential jurors will then be assigned to the borough’s two Supreme Court buildings. One trial, a 2015 car crash dispute, will take place in the Long Island City courthouse. The other will take place in the Jamaica Courthouse on Sutphin Boulevard. Attorneys will pick eight panelists — six jurors and two alternates — for each trial at those courthouses Tuesday, Pheffer said.
Though the Clerk’s Office will call on about 200 people to report to jury duty, only around half of them will likely show up, Pheffer said, based on typical reporting numbers. They will arrive in morning and afternoon shifts. That means about 50 people, with each shift separated into smaller groups.
Staff from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which operates courthouses in New York City, have prepared the juror waiting room to enforce social distancing, Pheffer said.
Every fourth chair is free, with the three seats in between blocked off to maintain six feet of separation. The room that typically holds up to 200 people can now fit 72, Pheffer said.
Staff have also outfitted the large ceremonial courtrooms at each courthouse to adhere to COVID protocols. Plexiglass surrounds the judge’s bench and the two litigants’ tables. Jurors will sit spaced out in the gallery rather than cram the cramped jury box.
Pheffer said staff have tested the courtroom acoustics and technology to ensure jurors can see and hear proceedings from their gallery positions.
Masks are mandated for everyone in the court buildings and Queens Borough Hall, and court officers administer health screenings and temperature checks to anyone entering the buildings.
It will also be easier to get out of jury duty.
Anyone who has or thinks they may have COVID-19 is prohibited from reporting. Anyone who thinks they may have come in contact with someone who has the illness is also mandated to stay home.
The precautions mark a huge shift from how the court system handled jury selection just days ahead of the near-total court system shutdown March 16.
The Clerk’s Office had begun taking some precautions in early-March, with court officers walking around with a box for prospective jurors to place their summonses rather than make people pass the forms down the line. Staff who sorted the paperwork wore gloves.
But the term “social distancing” had not yet entered the daily lexicon of most New Yorkers.
On March 10, judges refused to adjourn cases, hundreds of Queens residents continued to show up in response to their jury summonses and there were no public hand-sanitizing stations evident on any of the Civil Courthouse’s four floors, the Eagle reported at the time.
Over the next few days, several court personnel, including a Civil Supreme Court judge, tested positive for COVID-19. In Brooklyn, two judges died as a result of the illness.
More than seven months later, Pheffer said the courts are ready to handle the new challenge.
“I’m glad the courts are open and the jury system is operating again,” she said. “It’s a right under the Constitution to be judged by your peers.”
“This just means things are getting back to ‘normal,’” she added, emphasizing the quotation marks around the word “normal.”
“Little by little, we’re doing it.”
