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Court Watch Programs I answered a question about how to set up a court watch program last week. Here are some of the resources I unearthed in answer to that question: ++++++++++ Justice at the Red Hook Community Justice Center Last year, for the first time since the late 1960s, as far back as records are available, there were no homicides in the Red Hook community in Brooklyn, New York. Red Hook is both a court and a center for social services. On-site are teachers who offer GED courses and job training for teens, a job developers, social workers and drug counselors. This is also a Youth Court in which peers deal with low-level offenses by juveniles. All misdemeanors and a few low-level felony categories that call for a maximum of a year in jail come through this Brooklyn court. The Red Hook Public Safety Corps hires 50 residents each year to help at the justice center and work with the community. The workers receive living stipends and money toward education or job training. It has 11 safety corps alumni on its full time staff. ++++++++++ Supreme Court Rejects Extra Warnings for Teen Suspects The Supreme Court will not create a special rule for advising juvenile suspects of their Miranda rights prior to an interrogation. In a 5 to 4 decision on June 1, 2004, the Supreme Court said that criminal suspects who are juvenile are not entitled to more deferential treatment than adult suspects in terms of when Miranda warnings are issued. ++++++++++ Federal Rules of Evidence I had occasion to look up this information this week and will share it with you. ++++++++++ Ohio Family Court Bulletin At the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) web site the contents of six issues of this bulletin dealing with family courts are available to you as pdf files. Bulletin topics include family courts in the states, screening at intake, family court mediation services. Four more bulletins from this series are available at the Children, Families and the Courts page. These bulletins are also downloadable pdf files. Topics include interventions for unruly and truant youth, Ohio children's advocacy centers, families in court for child protection and domestic violence. ++++++++++ Update on the Nation’s First Juvenile Mental Health Court (Scroll to First Monday #12, May 2004) In this month’s First Monday, the newsletter of NCJFCJ’s Juvenile Sanctions Center , San Jose , Calif. , is the featured demonstration site. The Santa Clara County juvenile mental health court, the subject of this newsletter, is now in its third year of operation. It reviews the experience of the court, the changes it has made along the way, and discusses the protocol under which the court operates. Notable as well is the section on the relationships among the members of the court’s Multi-Disciplinary Team who have learned to work with and understand each other despite professional points of view, professional cultures and vocabularies that are often poles apart. ++++++++++ Ontario Law Allows Islamic Courts to Settle Disputes A 1991 Ontario arbitration law permits arbitration according to religious principles. The Islamic Court of Civil Justice in Ontario has chosen arbitrators who have undergone training in both Canadian civil law and the sharia, the body of Muslim law that includes the Koran. No criminal matters will be considered by the arbitrators and no corporal punishment can be imposed. Arbitration must be voluntary. Decisions by arbitrators are subject to court ratification. ++++++++++ An Unequal Defense: The failed promise of justice for the poor In this three-day series of articles the Seattle Times examines public defense in the state. Limited budgets, exploding caseloads, overburdened lawyers, and indifferent officials contribute to a failure in justice for the poor in the state of Washington. Particularly good is a graphic box comparing how many cases the state bar association recommends an attorney should take with a real attorney’s actual number of cases, 6.5 times the number recommended in the state standards. ++++++++++ Handling the Need for Interpreters in Court While this article’s subject matter is the Virginia court system, the subject matter is relevant nationally. Includes a description of a conference-call interpreter service that allows judges to access interpreters for 177 different languages. ++++++++++ When Criminal and Juvenile Judges’ Orders Conflict This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at what happens when judges in criminal court and juvenile court issue orders that conflict. In a recent child endangerment case, the juvenile court judge called for weekly visits between mother and children. The criminal court judge forbade the mother from seeing, calling or sending cards to nine of her children at any time during 14 years of probation. The case is one of several that violate an agreement between criminal and family courts to honor each other’s orders. ++++++++++ At the Intersection of Immigration Law and Juvenile Justice A two-part series of articles on immigrants within the ages of juvenile court jurisdiction and the host of immigration-related issues associated with them. The first addresses cases where a juvenile court adjudication or a criminal conviction may place a juvenile alien at risk of removal from the US . The second considers cases where juvenile court might serve as a vehicle to prevent the removal of a juvenile and permit him or her to gain permanent resident status. Both articles appear in the newsletter In Re… in the Juvenile Justice section of the APRI/NDAA website. ++++++++++ California’s Three Strikes Law Ten Years Later A newly released report from the Washington D.C. based Justice Policy Institute found:  | Three-strikes sentencing law has had little impact on violent crime while costing taxpayers $8 billion to imprison tens of thousands of felons, most of them for nonviolent offenses. | | Blacks have been imprisoned under the three-strikes law at 10 times the rate of whites, while the rate for Hispanics has been almost 80% greater than for whites. | | Three-strikes inmates in California now number more than 42,000; one-fourth of the state’s prison population. |
The report also contains a number of provocative findings that can be read in this article from the LA Times. Read and/or download Still Striking Out: Ten Years of California’s Three Strikes at the Justice Policy Institute’s web site. Read the Christian Science Monitor story on California ’s Three Strikes Law. ++++++++++ A Special Miranda Rule for Juveniles? In Yarborough v. Alvarado, the Supreme Court will consider whether juveniles are entitled to more prompt Miranda warnings than adults. Michael Alvarado, a 17-year-old high school student at the time, was convicted of second-degree murder for his alleged role in a 1995 killing in Santa Fe Springs , Calif. He was convicted in large part as a result of incriminating statements he made about his involvement in the shooting during a two-hour interview with a police detective roughly a month after the murder. Alvarado’s lawyers say juveniles should be treated more deferentially than adults because of their age and lack of experience with police. ++++++++++ How Public Should Public Records Be? From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, an article about a Minnesota Supreme Court advisory committee set to decide what kinds of court records should be posted on the Web. The committee is finding it a delicate job with no easy answers and is taking a “go-slow” approach. ++++++++++ Salaries for Prosecutors and Public Defenders Come Up Short An article in the February ABA Journal addresses salary issues for state attorneys. The article features Florida, but includes stories from other states in which budgets have been cut to the bone and caseloads back up. ++++++++++ St. Louis Family Court will open hearings to the public (at the search bar type in "Judge Thomas Frawley") A pilot project of the St. Louis Family Court will allow members of the general public to sit in on a wide range of hearings. The two-year experiment will test the premise that outside scrutiny breeds accountability within the foster care system. Judge Frawley has established an open-court policy with conditions aimed at protecting children. It will:
| Require that the court be closed when any child testifies | | Demand that the press not identify children involved in cases | | Allow parties to petition the court to close the hearing if they can demonstrate that an open hearing would harm the child -- except juvenile officers and state child protection workers | | Keep all adoption proceedings closed |
++++++++++ Lionel Tate to be Released Tate will appear in a Fort Lauderdale court January 26 for a bond hearing after signing a plea deal. Tate pled guilty to second-degree murder. He will serve one year of house arrest and 10-year probation. ++++++++++ Pennsylvania : An Assessment of Access to Counsel and Quality of Representation in Delinquency Proceedings The ABA ’s Juvenile Justice Center and the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia recently released a report on juvenile public defenders in Pennsylvania . The report illustrates that unevenness of resources from county to county is in part caused by the lack of statewide standards and accountability. Pennsylvania has no uniform system for assigning indigent defense lawyers, provides no state funding to counties, and collects no data in oversight for county defender services. Some findings from the report: | More than half of the public defender offices surveyed report that caseload pressures limit their ability to represent juvenile clients effectively. | | 58% say that lack of support services (such as investigators or expert witnesses) limits their ability to effectively represent juveniles. | | 71% described themselves as having fewer resources than local prosecutors. | | In preparing for disposition hearings, less than half usually prepare witnesses (the youth or the youth’s family), and 52% do so “rarely,” or “never.” |
The report is downloadable from the Juvenile Law Center ’s web site. It is 100+ pages in length so I suggest you start with the Executive Summary. Appendix C contains the ABA Juvenile Justice Standards relating to counsel for private parties. ++++++++++ VCO (Valid Court Order) This week I did some research on the VCO exception in status offender cases. A Valid Court Order permits judges to confine status offenders in secure detention facilities for limited periods of time if they are found to have violated it. The materials in this section include a description of and history of the VCO and a VCO Checklist. ++++++++++ Features of a Full Service Family Court The fall 2001 issue of the Ohio Family Court Bulletin, a publication reporting on the progress of Ohio ’s Family Court Feasibility Study, reviews the services offered by four Ohio family court pilot initiatives. The Fayette County pilot, for instance, screens most new cases involving children at intake for prior or concurrent court involvement and summarizes this information for the judge. Lorain County and Clermont County have established procedures to expedite the handling of child protection cases, and in Mercer County two court divisions share a family law magistrate, allowing for more consistent and efficient handling of child custody, support and visitation matters. Twelve pages, downloadable. ++++++++++ Privacy rights, the Internet, and Information Access Rights If you haven’t yet seen a collision like this in your state or locality, it’s likely just a matter of time. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Butler County , Ohio judges ordered the Clerk of Courts to remove domestic relations court cases from the county clerk web site because of privacy concerns. Public access to those records is now limited to the county courthouse where they are housed in the computer network. ++++++++++ Glossary of Terms – Juvenile Justice The Coalition for Juvenile Justice has a concise section on the terminology of the juvenile court and law enforcement online. |
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