JUSTICE DELAYED

NY courts are clogged and confusing; this year lawmakers must enact overdue
reforms.

The State Legislature has become a cavernous pothole in the road to a
better state court system. Instead of facilitating common-sense reform, it
has become an obstacle, thwarting attempts to reorganize the labyrinthine
system, streamline jury duty, rationalize drug laws and adequately
compensate sorely needed criminal-defense attorneys.

Court officials have made some progress on their own in their dogged
pursuit of a logical, user-friendly system. Now the lawmakers must lend
them a hand.

State courts are swamped with 3.5 million new filings a year. Drug arrests
alone have climbed from 27,000 in 1980 to 145,000 last year. In the face of
that onslaught, court officials have made jury duty fairer and less
onerous, by broadening the pool of jurors and spiffing up courthouses.
They've opened drug courts that combine adjudication with treatment,
testing and judicial monitoring. They've launched model family courts, to
shorten the stay in foster care for troubled children.

And, according to Chief Judge Judith Kaye's recent State of the Judiciary
speech, officials will pursue a "one family/one judge" strategy in domestic
violence cases, so families won't have to run from courthouse to courthouse
to resolve related problems of criminal violence, child neglect, divorce
and custody.

That fractured jurisdiction-which can force a family to appear before
different judges in different courts with one having little idea what the
other is doing-is a vivid illustration of the need for systemic
restructuring, which only the Legislature can accomplish. That it hasn't
makes no sense, except from the distorted perspective of Albany, where
partisanship and patronage can trump the interests of real people.

The Legislature should reorganize the state courts, reducing the nine
different types of trial courts to two. It should give a raise to
court-appointed lawyers, who haven't had one in 15 years. It should
eliminate mandatory prison sentences so that judges can exercise judgment,
deciding case by case the appropriate punishment for drug offenders. And it
should allow judges to decide when to sequester juries. It's time court
officials got a hand from lawmakers, instead of a stiff arm.