The Suffolk County Legal Aid Society is asking a State Supreme Court judge to order the towns of Riverhead, Southold and Southampton and the villages of Southampton and Sag Harbor to conduct arraignments of criminal defendants in Suffolk County District Court because the town and village court are inadequate to provide attorney-client meeting space in compliance with the requirements of the U.S. Constitution guarantees of effective assistance of counsel in a criminal proceeding, according to legal papers filed with the town clerk on Friday afternoon.
The named justice courts “are engaged in the systematic and continuous violation of the constitutional rights of indigent individuals who are brought before them for arraignment while in police custody and must be prohibited from conducting such arraignments until such time as they are capable of complying with the mandates of the fifth and sixth amendments to the United States Constitution,” states an Article 78 petition filed by Legal Aid Society of Suffolk County attorney Sabato Caponi on Feb. 4.
State Supreme Court Justice Denise Molia granted the petitioner’s application for an Order to Show Cause on Feb. 5 and directed the respondents to appear in court on Feb. 19.
The town and villages’ justice court facilities, which fail to provide adequate meeting space for attorney-client communications, violate the guarantees of the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the petition states.
“Legal Aid Society attorneys who are assigned by these courts to represent indigent defendants at their arraignment are being compelled to converse with the defendants in the presence of law enforcement personnel, thereby waiving the protections of confidentiality and risking that the attorney-client conversation will be used against the defendant in the criminal case,” it states. That risk is neither speculative nor conjectural, according to the petition. “It is a real and present evil.”
The petition cites a pending criminal case in the Sag Harbor Village justice court in which statements made by the defendant to his attorney in the presence of a village police officer because the court does not provide an appropriate area for private consultation were used in the police officer’s “oral admission report.” Prosecutors in the case said they intended to use those statements against the defendant at trial. That violates the Fifth Amendment protection against a defendant being compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case, according to the petition.
Legal Aid attorneys have “routinely and repeatedly requested that they be afforded a private meeting place” for attorney-client conversations, but were denied those requests.
Also named as petitioners are five current criminal defendants, one in each jurisdiction named as defendants. The Legal Aid lawyers for each of these defendants requested a private place for conferencing with their clients and were denied, the petition states, with the responses from the courts running the gambit from sympathetic inaction to the extreme of proposing to hold the defendant in custody without bail and adjourn the arraignment possibly for days until the attorney has had an opportunity to speak with the defendant in the Suffolk County Correctional Center, according to the petition.
The suit makes note of Riverhead town’s acknowledgement of the court’s inadequacies. “However, after taking some preliminary steps towards the relatively simple conversion of a storage room into an attorney conference room, the court abandoned the effort, abdicating any responsibility for the problem to the Town.”
The “only feasible way” to stop the escalating number of Sixth Amendment violations is to mandate the justice courts in the five jurisdictions to provide private areas for confidential client conferences and, until such can be provided, to prohibit them from conducting arraignments of defendants in police custody, the Legal Aid Society says.
Southold town attorney Martin Finnegan said the town agrees that a separate attorney-client room is critical,
“The only problem is there’s no room at the inn,” he said. As Southold moves forward with plans for a new justice court facility, Finnegan said segregated space for an attorney-client consultation room must be included.
All East End towns face the same challenge, Finnegan added.
“I agree with them 100 percent,” Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter, who has supported moving the justice court out of the building at 210 Howell Avenue it shares with the police department, said this morning.
“But the remedy they’re seeking is not realistic. I don’t think the supreme court justice has the authority to rule that we bring our prisoners to district court, which is part of the Unified Court System. Only the voters can do that,” Walter said. “We will defend that to the end.”
Justices in Southold and Riverhead have also complained of conditions in the court facilities that they say are unsafe for lack of appropriate security.
