Councilmember Salaam questions court appearance intervals and bed capacity impact

Mark J.'s data shows reducing the interval between court appearances for long stayers by seven days could free roughly 441 beds.

What is the current average interval?

What's your target?

What is your target?

I don't have my glasses on.

And what concretely is preventing courts from achieving it today?

Yeah, I could give you mine if you'd like.

Sure.

No, no, no.

So on that, you know, every time a case is on, there might be a different day, a different reason for an adjournment.

So I have never bought in, and I've been doing this for a long time, with the idea that if you reduce a case, the adjournment time, that that will have any effect on anything.

It really depends on what stage is the case in, right?

Are we trying to finish discovery?

Are we trying to get a decision on a motion?

Or are we at a point now where everything's been done and we're trying to get a case tried?

And in those cases, I prefer and we encourage our judges to set shorter adjournment dates.

But sometimes a lawyer will come in and say, because we've got all these programs going on and we've already committed this very busy lawyer to try a case in Brooklyn, and we know that case is going to be a four- or five-week case.

For us, it doesn't make sense adjourning that person's case in the other county to a 30-day period when we know that lawyer is going to be on trial.

If we find out that lawyer is not on trial, we then can advance the case, get that lawyer over, and get that case tried.

So it's really like there are moments that really matter.

And one is, has discovery been complete?

Have the hearings been done?

Is this case really ready for trial?

That's when the 30-day adjournments really matter.

And so we've been encouraging judges to do that.

But there's so many reasons.

Like, let's say a defendant, they're waiting for DNA results, and the prosecutor is saying, we're not getting those DNA results for 45 days or 60 days, which is too long.

And one of the things that I think would be helpful is a bigger investment in the forensic units of New York City to more speedily resolve these DNA things.

But if a doctor is telling the judge, you're not getting these DNA results for 60 days, why adjourn a case for 30 days when everybody knows that DNA evidence

is going to be very important and is going to have an impact on how the case gets resolved?

I'm not sure if I may just one last one.