New York Town Courts
September 26th, 2006 | Published in DIY, Paper Trail, State Data | 3 Comments
William Glaberson of the New York Times, with assistance from Jo Craven McGinty, has a three-part series on New York’s town courts, finding that “people have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse.” Town court judges do not have to be lawyers or even have a college education, and the state has little oversight ability.
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:33 pm (#)
While New York’s justice court system has its problems, the focus on this diverts attention from the same problems in all of our criminal and traffic courts, both New York and nationwide. There are good non-lawyer judges and bad lawyer judges.
May 25th, 2007 at 6:19 am (#)
please advise me how I can get a copy of the New York Times article and how to contact Mr. Glaberson.
By now I’m sure he has heard about the gross miscarriage of justice in New Lebanon New York when a 15 year old girl was put in jail for not returning her cheerleading uniform. The article concerning same was in the Independent newspaper published in Columbia County, New York
May 25th, 2007 at 10:07 pm (#)
Ira,
You can read the story by clicking on the link in the entry above these comments, and you can contact Glaberson from this page.