Chair Brooks-Powers questions Judge Zayas on firm trial dates and case management backstops

Judge, are you taking any steps to establish firm trial dates or some other backstop to ensure cases don't linger?

Linger on indefinitely?

Sure.

So once, you know, we don't establish a trial date until discovery is complete.

That's why we've been focusing a lot upon the completion of discovery and then the hearings.

But judges are

scheduling trial dates as soon as you can say the case is now ready for trial.

Not ready in the sense that it's going to go to trial right away, but all the things that needed to get done before trial has gotten done.

And so that's happening, and our judges are doing that.

You know, the other thing that gets considered is coordinating between busy prosecutors and busy defense attorneys.

Even though all of those things have happened, you know, the DNA is done, the discovery is all complete, hearings are done, lawyers'schedules also can...

Adversely affect the ability of a judge to set a date because the lawyer has an older case.

So a lawyer in Queens, who the judge wants that person to go to trial, might have an older case in Brooklyn with a defendant in.

And so we have this coordination happening.

We have an initiative which basically makes sure that the oldest

case where defendant is incarcerated gets the priority.

So we use our authority to say, wait a minute, Queens judge, do not force that defendant, that lawyer to go to trial because we want this

older case, this way older case to go to trial.

So there's even that sort of cross-county collaboration that's happening.

No, that's good to know.