Legal News

Reporter's Notebook: Zoned Courts Begin at Philadelphia?s Criminal Justice Center

By Brian Harris

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

Philadelphia's criminal courts undertook a historic change today to centralize all of the city's preliminary hearings at the Criminal Justice Center in Center City and align the courtrooms with the city's six detective divisions in a zoned court model. The changes are being made because criminal justice leaders hope that the zoned court model will reduce the number of cases dismissed or continued because of the unavailability of police or civilian crime witnesses and will increase the quality of prosecutions by allowing prosecutors to learn about the players in their assigned communities and the crime trends in those communities.

Here are The Legal?s eyewitness observations of one morning in the criminal court?s new era.

The flow of people into the building seemed to move quickly this morning, but there were lags and other hiccups in courtrooms as the new system started.

8:10 a.m.: The security line, which is controlled by the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office, moved swiftly. Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge D. Webster Keogh, administrative judge of the court's trial division, and Joseph Lanzalotti, the Common Pleas Court's criminal deputy court administrator, were observing the scene on the ground floor lobby. Victim witness coordinators from the District Attorney's Office and other CJC staff assigned to direct people were mostly standing around without much to do. Some of the elevators were only going to the upper floors of the courthouse. Staff were operating the elevators, as well as directing people into the elevators. Unlike the seemingly impossible press of people that can mob the building's elevator bank, getting onto the elevators today was swift and painless.

8:25 a.m.: After arriving in Courtroom 603, a Municipal Court courtroom dedicated to hearing preliminary hearings arising out of the East Detective Division, a court advocate checked in with me. Preliminary hearings, scheduled to start at 8 a.m., had not yet started.

8:37 a.m.-9:06 a.m.: Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Jimmie Moore was on the bench. As the status of both sides was called, prosecutors were not ready in at least nine cases, sometimes because police witnesses, civilian witnesses, or complainants were not yet present. Defense counsel said they were not ready in two cases. The cases were held until later that morning to see if the necessary witnesses and complainants showed up. In the first call for cases, there was one case in which both sides were ready. And there were a couple cases listed in the room by mistake since they were set for trial and should have been scheduled for a trial room.

9:06-9:14 a.m.: The 9 o?clock hour  had been expected to see a heavy press of people into the building, but it only took eight minutes to go through the security line a second time. In addition to Keogh and Lanzalotti, Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, who is leading a review of the city's criminal justice system and previously tried to centralize preliminary hearings in the CJC when he was a Municipal Court judge, First Judicial District Court Administrator Dave Lawrence and FJD Chief Deputy Court Administrator David Wasson were observing the scene on the ground floor lobby.

9:14 a.m.: Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Rayford Means was on the bench in Courtroom 705, the Strategic Management ARC (Advance Review and Consolidation) Readiness and Trial (SMART) courtroom for the Southwest Detective Division. SMART rooms are supposed to function as the lead courtrooms for each floor of the courthouse to coordinate cases and pick up the slack in hearing trials. Means didn't have much to do right out of the gate, despite the fact that Common Pleas Court was supposed to start at 9 a.m. Means was left waiting while the assigned assistant district attorney and assistant defender met in the back to discuss plea bargain offers.

9:20 a.m.: Means used the opportunity to educate the defendants and others in his courtroom about the zoned courts. He said that before, when he ran the main courtroom for list, or nonjury, cases, that all cases came through his courtroom, but now there are five other courtrooms like his -- all six aligned with the six detective divisions. And he said the prosecutors are supposed to make offers when cases are first listed in the SMART rooms. "They are talking back there as we sit here and look at each other," he said.

9:28 a.m.: Means said that his courtroom used to have people standing out in the hallway and he was ready to churn out cases.

9:55 a.m.: Three defendants by this point had told the judge they had been in the building much earlier, but their subpoenas gave them the wrong courtroom or they had been held up by the line downstairs.

10:09 a.m.: Means? courtroom finally gets into gear. The first defendant, who had held a sleeping girl in his arms while waiting for his case to be called for over an hour, was up for an alleged probation violation. The defendant was sentenced to 11.5 to 23 months in jail with immediate parole over a violation of his eight-year probation term for a conviction of felony aggravated assault.

10:28 a.m.: Despite a ban on smoking in public buildings, a woman in a black-knit winter hat was smoking on the ninth floor in the stairwell.

10:28 a.m.: In Courtroom 903, a hybrid courtroom handling both preliminary hearings and trials for cases out of the Northeast Detective Division, Municipal Court Judge Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde appeared to be upset because of a hiccup in being able to access the computer system in order to set up court dates. "It's not OK when I have somebody's life in my hands," Frazier-Lyde said.

10:50 a.m.: After holding two stipulated trials and hearing two violation-of-probation cases, the court took a 10-minute recess to see if the preliminary hearings held over from 8 a.m. would be ready to go at 11 a.m.

10:58 a.m.: In an interview after walking into Courtroom 903, Charles Cunningham, the first assistant defender of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said that the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, unlike its historic practice, was making offers at preliminary hearings today. They were "offers that certainly warrant consideration," Cunningham said. But he said the office's least experienced attorneys handled preliminary hearings and are not always equipped to determine if a plea bargain is in a client's interest. If the DA's office provides offers and discovery before preliminary hearings, Cunningham said that the office might be able to provide a yes or no on plea bargain offers and tell the DA's office whether they need to call in complainants for preliminary hearings.

11:15 a.m.: Frazier-Lyde was back on the bench. She told at least five defendants that if they were late at their next court date that she would raise their bail.  One defendant said he was here at 8 a.m. but he was in Courtroom 906. Another defendant said he didn't hear his name called at 9:38 a.m.

11:37 a.m.: Preliminary hearings finally start rolling. A defendant was held over for trial over alleged shoplifting at the Fresh Grocer near Temple University. Another shoplifting defendant was held over for trial because of an alleged threat she made to a clerk at a store in the Gallery at the Market East and because of the alleged resistance she gave to the police officers trying to arrest her over the threat.

12:15 p.m.: Frazier-Lyde's list was still going. 

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).