Queens grand juries are set to resume as in-person operations increase
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By David Brand
Three grand juries will convene in Queens next week, as state courts in New York City resume most in-person functions, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said Monday.
Grand juries have been on hold since mid-March, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order suspending section 180.80 of criminal law, which mandates that cases be presented to a grand jury within six days of arrest.
Defendants charged with felonies have still been indicted, however. Since court buildings closed to stop the spread of COVID-19, judges have presided at virtual preliminary hearings, which pit a prosecutor against a defense attorney in open court.
With New York City in phase four of the state’s economic reopening plan, Queens residents will return to courthouses to serve on 23-person grand jury panels starting Aug. 10, DiFiore said.
“We have been carefully planning for the resumption of grand jury operations in New York City,” she said during a weekly address to court personnel and the legal community. “We have been retrofitting our facilities, modifying our operating procedures and working with the district attorneys and the defense bar to ensure the safe return of grand jurors to our courthouses.”
In addition to three grand juries in Queens, there will be four in Manhattan, three each in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and one in Staten Island, DiFiore said.
“Obviously, this is a most important milestone on the road back to a ‘new normal’ for our courts and the entire criminal justice system,” she added.
Other types of in-person proceedings have already resumed, including arraignments, hearings and, in a handful of instances, trials. A suspended murder trial resumed with a jury in the Bronx and a jury sat for a Housing Court case in Brooklyn last week.
The state court system has faced persistent criticism from Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea as shootings have spiked and arrests have plummeted in recent weeks. De Blasio blamed the increase in crime on a lack of in-person court operations, suggesting that people charged with crimes are not being prosecuted, while shifting blame from the police department or city and state policies.
“For months, we have not had a functioning court system,” he told CNN last month.
State court officials have pushed back, aggressively denouncing the claims of de Blasio and Shea and pointing to the tens of thousands of arraignments that have taken place during the COVID-19 courthouse shutdown. State and city data also contradicts the claims.
A New York Post analysis found that gun cases are moving through the criminal justice system at a similar rate to 2019, despite the monthlong suspension of in-person proceedings. Arraignments and hearings were conducted virtually between mid-March and July 16.
The NYPD’s own data counters the notion that shootings have increased because people have been released from jails as a result of the state bail reform law or efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Post also reported. Only one person released from RIkers had been charged in relation to a shooting as of July 8, the data shows.
Though trials have been on hold, thousands of other criminal cases have been heard in Queens since courthouses closed, including nearly 3,000 since mid-June, according to court data.
Between June 15 and July 26, Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term judges handled 2,931 cases, conducted 49 arraignments on indictments, handed down 144 sentences and obtained 117 dispositions, according to statistics provided by Queens court officials.
Criminal Term Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas commended the work of Queens Supreme Court judges and personnel.
“Since the beginning of the epidemic, Criminal Term has worked very hard handling hundreds of emergency applications and emergency hearings, almost immediately allowing the parties to file online applications,” Zayas said. “We then quickly adopted an electronic document delivery filing system which allowed attorneys to submit all motions online, which the Justices of the Criminal Term promptly decided during the pandemic.”
Zayas pointed to the number of cases called into the record, with both parties appearing virtually or in-person, since June 15, when the court stopped administrative adjournments.
Queens judges tackled “almost every single pending case in the County — arraigning indicted cases, disposing of cases, taking guilty pleas, sentencing defendants and otherwise resolving disputes between the parties and moving the cases forward in one way or another, pursuant to the Chief Judge’s Excellence Initiative,” he said.
“Our statistics in this regard speak for themselves — and they clearly show that our court has been open for business since the epidemic began.”
