Connect with us

New York

The Prosecutors Who Are Heading For the Door

Published

on

The Prosecutors Who Are Heading For the Door

Good morning. It’s Monday. At the moment we’ll discover out why prosecutors are leaving the New York Metropolis district attorneys’ workplaces in droves. We’ll additionally have a look at the strategies different cities are utilizing to influence homeless individuals to go away the subways.

The Nice Resignation has now come to New York Metropolis’s prosecutors’ workplaces.

Tons of of them have give up previously 12 months. That features about one-fifth of the prosecutors in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. This 12 months alone, the Brooklyn district legal professional’s workplace misplaced 36; the Manhattan workplace, 44; the Bronx, no less than 28; Staten Island, 9 — a tenth of the workplace’s prosecutors; and in Queens, prosecutors are leaving at twice the same old tempo.

Driving the departures, legal professionals instructed my colleague Jonah Bromwich, are a mix of pandemic burnout, low salaries and ballooning workloads. The rising strain comes partly from two new legal guidelines supposed to make the judicial course of fairer: They provide protection groups the suitable to see extra prosecution paperwork sooner, however that additionally imply prosecutors should work extra, and sooner, amid a courtroom system already straining to perform.

Right here, too, the story is within the numbers.

Advertisement
  • $72,000. That’s the wage for a beginning prosecutor in Brooklyn, the borough the place real-estate costs are so notoriously excessive that lowballing them was sufficient to deal a loss of life blow to Shaun Donovan’s mayoral marketing campaign. Pay in different boroughs is comparable, in a metropolis bristling with legislation companies providing entry-level six-figure salaries.

  • 21. That’s what number of varieties of knowledge prosecutors should acquire and share beneath new discovery legal guidelines in New York State. The Manhattan district legal professional, Alvin Bragg, reported to the Metropolis Council that his workplace now makes use of 10 occasions as a lot knowledge storage because it did in 2020: 320 terabytes of knowledge, up from 32.

  • 100. That’s the variety of circumstances that many prosecutors deal with without delay.

All this comes, in fact, amid the strain dealing with all staff: New household tasks due to the pandemic, the trauma of dropping pals, family and neighbors to the illness, the chaos and delays thrown into the courtroom system by an extended interval of distant trials and the daunting challenges of attempting to resolve the system’s issues with restricted assets. It additionally provides to the lure of private-sector jobs the place they might nonetheless work from home.

“They simply merely can’t do it anymore,” Darcel Clark, the Bronx district legal professional, instructed The New York Occasions. “The cash just isn’t the place it must be, and the work-life steadiness is simply unmanageable.”

However the brand new legal guidelines got here into impact to take care of actual, pressing issues. One is named Kalief’s legislation, named for Kalief Browder, a teen who dedicated suicide after being held on Rikers Island for 3 years and not using a trial.

The brand new workload does underscore the necessity for aggressive salaries for prosecutors — and public defenders — stated Tina Luongo, the legal professional in command of the felony protection apply on the Authorized Help Society.

However, she stated, “It can’t be the case and it should not be the case that the way in which you remedy a workload downside is to decrease the rights of any person accused of against the law.”

Advertisement

Climate

Take pleasure in a principally sunny day within the mid-50s, New York. At night time, it’s principally cloudy with temps within the mid-40s.

alternate-side parking

In impact till April 14 (Holy Thursday).


Mother and father could possibly be forgiven for dropping observe of whether or not young children will want their masks on Monday. The reply is sure: New York Metropolis’s masks mandate remains to be on for youngsters beneath 5 years outdated in day care facilities and preschools.

Advertisement

There was lots of forwards and backwards over the previous few days. Mayor Eric Adams had pledged to raise the town’s masks mandate for that age group on Monday. However final Friday, he stated the rule would stay, since coronavirus circumstances are rising once more. Day by day circumstances are actually round 1,250, up from 500 in early March.

Earlier on Friday, a decide on Staten Island had issued an order to strike down the masks mandate. However by Friday night time, the town had gained an appellate determination permitting the rule to face. Adams’s recommendation to metropolis residents: “We wish you to be ready, not panicked.”

In case you missed it …

  • A former Yale Faculty of Medication administrator pleaded responsible to defrauding the college of $40 million in laptop gear that she bought and resold to pay for a lavish life-style that federal prosecutors stated included the acquisition of three properties.

  • The times earlier than a gap are all the time irritating for a Broadway producer. However few have been beneath a harsher highlight than Garth Drabinsky, who served time in a Canadian jail for fraud.


Throughout the nation, transit techniques, with their huge enclosed public areas, have lengthy acted as de facto shelter for unhoused individuals who don’t wish to go to barracks-style shelters. New York Metropolis isn’t any exception, and as Adams seeks to coax extra riders again to the subway, a glance by Michael Gold and Erin Woo at different cities means that they may present a mannequin that New York can emulate.

Advertisement

Critics of the mayor’s plan — to have 1,000 cops intensify subway patrols and so as to add a number of dozen social staff to the 200 engaged on outreach there — say it hews too carefully to what was lengthy cities’ default method, utilizing police to push the unsheltered out of subway automobiles and tunnels.

Different cities are experimenting with proactive outreach, responding with social providers for people who find themselves residing within the subway.

In Philadelphia, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has handed over an 11,000-square house in a central subway station to a nonprofit that aids unsheltered individuals, offering on-site providers inside the transit system. It gives non permanent shelter, medical providers, restrooms, laundry and assist discovering housing.

In Atlanta and San Francisco, in addition to in Philadelphia, groups of social staff have been despatched to answer conditions involving homeless or mentally unwell individuals on public transit; in San Francisco, cops are instructed to attend for social staff as an alternative of instantly eradicating the individuals.

However in all these cities, the largest problem is coordinating frontline efforts within the transit system with the tougher objective of accelerating protected, accessible shelters and reasonably priced housing.

Advertisement

“You want to have the ability to transfer individuals into housing and higher shelters,” stated Jennifer Friedenbach, the chief director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco. “If that stuff doesn’t exist, you then’re principally sort of managing the difficulty. And that’s what I feel a lot of the transportation techniques are left with.”



METROPOLITAN diary

Pricey Diary:

I boarded the M104 and took a seat behind a gray-haired lady dressed all in black. The white tag on her sweater was sticking straight up from her neckline.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

New York

Trump Tries to Move Hush-Money Case to Federal Court Before Sentencing

Published

on

Trump Tries to Move Hush-Money Case to Federal Court Before Sentencing

Former President Donald J. Trump sought to move his Manhattan criminal case into federal court on Thursday, filing the unusual request three months after he was convicted in state court.

The long-shot bid marks Mr. Trump’s latest effort to stave off his sentencing in state court in his hush-money trial, in which he was convicted of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

He is scheduled to receive his punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when he will square off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.

“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, wrote in the filing.

Their filing came even as the Trump legal team is awaiting the result of a separate effort to postpone the sentencing; it opened a second front that could complicate the first.

Advertisement

On Aug. 15, Mr. Trump asked the state court judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, to delay the sentencing until after Election Day. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that they needed more time to challenge his conviction on the basis of a recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity for official acts.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which won the conviction of Mr. Trump on May 30, has argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling has “no bearing” on their case, which centers on Mr. Trump’s cover- up of a sex scandal involving a porn star. But the Manhattan prosecutors deferred to the judge on whether to delay the sentencing, leaving the door open for Justice Merchan to punt until after the election.

Justice Merchan was expected to rule on the delay request next week, and it is unclear whether Mr. Trump’s federal petition would disrupt that. In the federal filing, the former president’s lawyers asked a judge to find that Justice Merchan was barred by law from sentencing Mr. Trump while their attempt to move the case was underway.

It seemed possible that effort might backfire. If the federal judge does not grant the lawyers’ request, they will have further alienated Justice Merchan as he prepares to sentence their client. Mr. Trump faces up to four years in prison, though he could receive a shorter sentence, or merely probation.

There are signs the federal judge might be skeptical. Mr. Trump already tried — and failed — to move the case to federal court. Last year, soon after the former president was indicted, he asked the same federal judge to remove the case from Justice Merchan, arguing that it concerned official acts as president.

Advertisement

The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, rejected that argument.

“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” Judge Hellerstein wrote in an opinion last year. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties.”

It is unclear how soon Judge Hellerstein might take up Thursday’s request, or whether he will hold a hearing to entertain it. In their filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers cast aspersions on the New York State court system, saying its procedures had “proven inadequate” to protect federal interests and, if allowed to continue, would “result in further irreparable harm to President Trump.”

The unorthodox filing suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to make any and every attempt they can to delay the sentencing, even if Judge Hellerstein balks.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.

Advertisement

The filing on Thursday captured two of Mr. Trump’s favorite legal strategies: delay, and attacks on Justice Merchan.

The former president has on three occasions sought to oust Justice Merchan from the case, claiming he is biased, and lobbing personal attacks at the judge’s daughter, who is a Democratic political consultant. The judge has rejected each request and assailed the claims as “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims.”

Continue Reading

New York

Video: Heavy Downpour Floods New York City Streets

Published

on

Video: Heavy Downpour Floods New York City Streets

new video loaded: Heavy Downpour Floods New York City Streets

transcript

transcript

Heavy Downpour Floods New York City Streets

Drivers navigated flooded roads, including major highways, as a storm hit the New York City region.

Announcement: Bainbridge Avenue Jerome Avenue.

Advertisement

Recent episodes in Extreme Weather

Continue Reading

New York

Senator Menendez’s Resignation Letter

Published

on

Senator Menendez’s Resignation Letter

ROBERT MENENDEZ
NEW JERSEY
COMMITTEES:
BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN
AFFAIRS
FINANCE
FOREIGN RELATIONS
The Honorable Phil Murphy
Governor of New Jersey
Office of the Governor
Trenton, N.J. 08625
Dear Governor Murphy,
United States Senate
WASHINGTON, DC 20510-3005
July 23, 2024
528 SENATE HART OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20510
(202) 224-4744
210 HUDSON STREET
HARBORSIDE 3, SUITE #1000
JERSEY CITY, NJ 07311
(973) 645-3030
208 WHITE HORSE PIKE
SUITE 18-19
BARRINGTON, NJ 08007
(856) 757-5353
This is to advise you that I will be resigning from my office as the United States Senator from
New Jersey, effective on the close of business on August 20, 2024.
This will give time for my staff to transition to other possibilities, transfer constituent files that
are pending, allow for an orderly process to choose an interim replacement, and for me to close
out my Senate affairs.
While I fully intend to appeal the jury’s verdict, all the way and including to the Supreme Court,
I do not want the Senate to be involved in a lengthy process that will detract from its important
work. Furthermore, I cannot preserve my rights upon a successful appeal, because factual matters
before the ethics committee are not privileged. This is evidenced by the Committee’s Staff
Director and Chief Counsel being called to testify at my trial.
I am proud of the many accomplishments I’ve had on behalf of New Jersey, such as leading the
federal effort for Superstorm Sandy recovery, preserving and funding Gateway and leading the
federal efforts to help save our hospitals, State and municipalities, as well as New Jersey families
through a once in a century COVID pandemic. These successes led you, Governor, to call me the
“Indispensable Senator.”
I thank the citizens of New Jersey for the extraordinary privilege of representing them in the
United States Senate.
Sincerely,
Pabet Menang.
Robert Menendez
United States Senator
New Jersey
cc: The Honorable Kamala Harris, President of the Senate
The Honorable Ann Berry, Secretary of the Senate

Continue Reading

Trending