Town and Village Justice Courts-NYT Article

Ummm....long time no post (from me). It was a busy summer with several cases that really dragged on. If anyone hasn't seen the terrific series of articles in the New York Times about the village and town justice court system in NYS, you really should check it out. Here's a link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/nyregion/26courts.html

It's some very good reporting about a situation that's a total mess in some places. The Times largely focused on upstate T&V courts, many of which have non-lawyer justices handling a variety of criminal and civil cases. From personal experience I can say that working in a court where the judge isn't a lawyer (and doesn't know a whole lot about the law) is scary, frustrating and sometimes, painful. The sad thing is that it's not like the vast majority of these judges don't want to do the "right thing". They do!! The trouble is they don't understand that our criminal law system (as much of a mess as it is) hangs by a thread...and that thread is insuring that every defendent gets at least a bare minimum of due process. All too often, that's what's missing in these courts.

Fortunately, most of the courts I regularly practice in do have attorneys serving as town justices. The major problem in those courts is the lack of a "record". There's no court stenographer or audio tape of proceedings in these courts and that makes it very hard to make an effective appeal of a mistaken judicial decision.