First Department Rules Bronx Merger Illegal

Free Breaking News: First Department Rules Bronx Merger Illegal

Daniel Wise

New York Law Journal

February 24, 2010

The 2004 merger of the courts that handle criminal cases in the Bronx into a single court with jurisdiction to handle both felonies and misdemeanors is unconstitutional, a divided panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, ruled this morning.

A four-judge majority in an unsigned opinion concluded in People v. Correa, 51080C/05, that then-Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and then-Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, who has since succeeded Judge Kaye as chief judge, "overstepped the bounds of administrative and operational authority they possess under the state Constitution."

In dissent, Justice Rolando T. Acosta (See Profile) warned that the majority's "unbridled judicial activism effectively upends tens of thousands of misdemeanor convictions in Bronx County over the past five years."

Contrary to the majority's conclusion, Justice Acosta wrote, the state Legislature, "cognizant of the great wisdom inherent in the separation of powers doctrine," has delegated to the chief judge the authority to implement the merger.

A unanimous panel, in a second unsigned opinion, People v. Mack, 19145C, also found the Bronx merger unconstitutional based on the majority opinion in Correa.

The First Department decisions will appear in the print edition of tomorrow's Law Journal.

Because there was overlap in the membership of the two panels, a total of six judges concluded that the merger was unconstitutional and also violates the state Judiciary Law.

Justices Richard T. Andrias (See Profile) and Leland G. DeGrasse (See Profile) were in the majority in both cases. The remaining judges joining the majority in Correa were Justices Eugene Nardelli (See Profile) a\nd James M. Catterson (See Profile).

Rounding out the four-judge panel in the unanimous Mack decisionwere Justices John W. Sweeny Jr. (See Profile) and James M. McGuire (See Profile).

Under the merger, the New York City Criminal Court in the Bronx, which had handled only misdemeanors, was combined with the Criminal Term of the Supreme Court, which had handled only felonies, were combined into a newly created Criminal Division of the Supreme Court, Bronx County (NYLJ, Nov. 9, 2004).

The pilot project ran into opposition from the start. The Association of Supreme Court Justices of the State of New York, joined by the Association of Court of Claims Judges, opposed it.

The 48 judges assigned to the about-to-be-merged court sharply questioned Office of Court Administration officials in an hour-long session about the legality of the experiment (NYLJ, Oct. 29, 2004).

Court administrators argued that the merged court, with the added firepower of 10 Criminal Court judges who had been promoted to acting Supreme Court justices, would reduce backlogs of both felony and misdemeanor cases.

The combined court succeeded in holding the number of pending misdemeanor cases steady despite a 35 percent rise in misdemeanor filings between 2004 and 2009. But the number of pending felonies during that period has outpaced new filings, 72 percent to 10 percent.

In a recently released official evaluation of the merger, court officials found that "five years on, the Bronx merger has not yet proved to be a wholly effective solution" (NYLJ, Nov. 6, 2009).

In the report, court officials pledged to augment the number of judges assigned to the merged court, which had dipped to 41, and to take other administrative measures to clear the felony backlog.

Free Breaking News: First Department Rules Bronx Merger Illegal.