Tina Luongo (Legal Aid Society) on systemic causes of court delay and resource misallocation

I'll go first.

Hi.

I'm Tina Longo.

I'm the chief attorney at the Legal Aid Society's criminal defense practice.

We are the citywide provider of trial, appellate, parole, and post-conviction work.

We have trial offices in each of New York City, and we are celebrating our 150 years serving the city

and have been the public defender for the city before Gideon v.

Wainwright.

I have served as the public defender and began my career in the New York City Office of the Legal Aid Society.

For over 25 years.

I wanted to start, my colleagues are each going to take specific

issues to address.

I sort of wanted to step back and set the sort of groundwork.

First and foremost, thank you for this hearing.

It's critically important, particularly right now.

But it is also telling, I think, a little bit

about who is not at this table and who has not come before this, you as the chair and this council,

who is not here to answer questions about desk appearance tickets and over-policing,

Because I think what it says is that people, the district attorneys and the police department, see this as a very narrow issue that you're trying to address, when in fact it is not.

It is actually a systemic problem.

Yes.

What we are trying to, and what we are talking about here, and what we are trying to get to, is what is the problems and what are the solutions that are driving court delay?

But you cannot have that conversation.

You cannot have solutions without identifying the problems and with each stakeholder coming forward.

To say, here is what we see, here is the role we play, here are the solutions we implement.

But you're not really getting all of that.

You have the core.

come, and we really do appreciate our judiciary, our chief judge, and our statewide administrative judge for taking proactive steps.

We appreciate that Mach J was here to provide some context.

We appreciate that you heard a lot about this discovery technology.

And I certainly appreciate our colleagues who come as public defenders.

And every single day right now in courts across this city, our staff are dealing with those delays.

More importantly, the people we represent, those impacted, are suffering those delays.

It isn't really about court delay.

It's about intentional decisions made about where we are going to, as a city, invest our time and money.

So as we are hearing from the judge, and as my colleagues likely will talk about, we need program services, we need mental health services, our clients need housing.

Our public defenders need higher salaries.

We have offices right now negotiating contracts.

Some of them have, our union has said that they will strike.

We have lost felony attorneys at astronomical clips.

And I want to say, I will give them this, that the district attorneys also lose

felony assistants, DAs that are ready to try serious cases at high rates because of the lack of pay.

Because of the lack of keeping up with the cost of living in New York City for people who have dedicated themselves to public service.

At the same time, though, NYPD's overtime budget is nearing a billion dollars and has almost hit a billion dollars four years in a row.

At the same time, we are looking at

at the attrition of our staff, our social workers, our investigators, our litigation assistants.

NYPD in this city is set to bring on a brand new class.

Those are intentional decisions.

About where we are placing our resources.

So it is hard for us to think through how do we fund all the solutions we need within the court system

and within our offices that must have the staff to meet the challenges that are brought by what is real justice.

So I say that to set the framework that

the problem doesn't start at the courthouse door and the solution will never be found in tinkering around the edges.

And I thought I'll turn it over to my colleagues.