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Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why New York Judges are fighting a major plan to fix court backlogs
— This story first appeared in New York Focus, a non-profit news publication investigating New York state politics. Sign up for their stories at newsletter. New York's justice system has a major problem with backlogs. People languish at Rikers Island and other jails, waiting for their trials. Civil cases drag on for years. Yet a proposed fix is facing fierce opposition from a surprising source — state Supreme Court justices, who routinely witness the consequences borne by the backlogs. In the final days of the Albany legislative session, a constitutional amendment to create an uncapped number of new state Supreme Court justice seats is nearing the finish line. The amendment passed both the Senate and Assembly last year, and if both chambers pass it again before the session's end in June, it will secure a spot on the statewide ballot in 2026, leaving the final decision to voters. The 'Uncap Justice Act' has broad and powerful support. Its backers include Governor Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, leaders of the Office of Court Administration, the city and state bar associations, the Business Council, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and groups representing the rights of criminal defendants. Politically outgunned The opposition comes primarily from several associations representing state Supreme Court judges, which acknowledge they are politically outgunned. Yet some assemblymembers are having second thoughts after listening to counterarguments, according to Frank Caruso, president of the state Association of Justices of the Supreme Court. He called the measure nearing passage 'reckless,' and believes a rival plan is gaining last-minute steam. The fight pits separate but equal branches of government against each other. It also puts part of upstate at odds with New York City, especially Manhattan, which the amendment's two main sponsors — State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Alex Bores — represent. To win election, state Supreme Court judges must first be nominated to appear on the ballot by political party insiders, a process that has been criticized for inherent conflicts of interest. After nomination, candidates appear on the general election ballot in one of New York's 13 judicial districts, and if successful, win 14-year terms. The proposed amendment would make a simple change in the state constitution by removing language that limits each of New York's 13 judicial districts to one Supreme Court justice per 50,000 people. The status quo is based on language adopted in 1846 and last modified in 1963, when, according to Bores, caseloads were a third of today's. According to Bores, three districts have hit their cap and couldn't add another justice without a huge spike in population: Manhattan, the Bronx, and the Capital Region. 'The dumbest reason why we are so backlogged is that we don't have enough judges,' Bores told New York Focus. 'There is no similar limit in the federal constitution. There is no similar limit in 49 states.' New York has 11 trial courts, and ten of them have no such limit. The exception is the Supreme Court, which can hear a wide range of both criminal and civil cases. If the amendment passed, the legislature could place new Supreme Court judges anywhere in the state. Each new judgeship costs the state roughly $1 million annually, according to Bores. Manhattan shoulders a disproportionate share of litigation, driven by its daily influx of millions of commuters, more than 50 million annual tourists, and concentration of foreign, federal, state and local government institutions, according to the nonprofit Fund for Modern Courts. Its role as a global financial hub also makes it a key venue for complex business disputes. 'An average Manhattan Supreme Court Justice walks into their office every day with 2,500 cases on their docket and 400 motions awaiting their decision,' said Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs, who represents a portion of Manhattan. There was a distinct Manhattan presence at an Albany press conference last week in support of the proposed amendment, including assemblymembers, a group representing public defenders, and the executive director of the county Democratic Party. There were also assemblymembers from Brooklyn, Westchester, and Albany. Though case backlogs have grown across the state since the onset of Covid-19, the largest spike occurred in New York City. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of unresolved cases across New York City courts jumped by 34 percent, according to data from the Office of Court Administration. Pending cases elsewhere in the state increased by 9 percent. The constitutional limit on Supreme Court justices filters down to the other trial courts. According to the New York City Bar Association, there were 364 elected Supreme Court justices in 2022. In addition, 317 more judges had been 'reassigned' by the state Office of Court Administration to serve as 'acting' Supreme Court justices from other courts. This maneuver to circumvent the constitutional limit takes away resources from lower courts and forces litigants to appear before judges whom they'll never be able to vote for or against. 'This 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' approach stretches our judicial resources thin,' said Muhammad Faridi, president of the New York City Bar Association. 'It depletes critical resources from other courts that need them the most. It undercuts the right of voters to elect Supreme Court justices.' Caruso, president of the state Association of Justices of the Supreme Court, said he agreed that the state needs to expand the number of Supreme Court justices and end the system's unacceptable delays. But he said the Bores proposal threatened to 'undermine the separation of powers' by injecting a political branch of government — the legislature — into the judiciary. 'Our concern is any type of 'horse-trading,' where judges would be sent — or a seat would be sent — from one end of the state to the other,' he said. The legislature currently has unfettered discretion to create other types of trial court judgeships, and allegations of politicization have arisen in the past. For instance, in an effort to address case backlogs, the Democratic-controlled legislature added 12 civil court judgeships in New York City last year. The four Democrat-heavy boroughs received three new judges each, while none went to Republican-heavy Staten Island. While Staten Island Republicans slammed the move, Hoylman-Sigal told the New York Post that judges could be transferred from other boroughs to Staten Island if necessary. But those judges wouldn't have been elected by more conservative Staten Island voters. Caruso, who is a state Supreme Court justice in Niagara County, expressed concern that 'districts west of Albany would suffer' if the distribution of judgeships were in the hands of a legislature dominated by downstate lawmakers. 'I don't think the focus would be on us and our districts, our constitutional guarantee,' he said. He acknowledged the severity of backlogs in New York City, but argued that you 'don't want to throw the rest of the state under the bus in order to deal with those backlogs.' Caruso's statewide advocacy group opposes the proposed amendment, as does an association representing New York City's Supreme Court justices. Yet there is a split within the five boroughs, with Manhattan's Supreme Court justices supporting the amendment. A group representing 'acting' Supreme Court justices also backs the Uncap Justice Act. Bores has introduced a companion bill that would require the state's chief administrative judge to make annual recommendations to the legislature concerning the number of judges needed in each court. This chief administrative judge would take population into account, as well as other factors, such as the number of cases filed and their complexity. Ultimately, Bores's bill would leave decisions about adding judgeships in the hands of the legislature. This companion bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday but hasn't moved through committee in the Assembly. According to Bores, both Chief Judge Rowan Wilson and Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas support the proposed constitutional amendment. But Caruso believes that removing the cap would place too much power in their Office of Court Administration, which could exert influence upon the legislature's decisions about where to create judgeships. While Supreme Court justices generally have a favorable view of Wilson, he won't be chief judge forever, Caruso noted. and in the future, 'you could wind up with a dictatorial person that won't listen to anything.' Instead, Caruso's organization supports a rival proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx and state Senator Leroy Comrie of Queens. This proposal would retain a population cap in the constitution but allow a justice for every 30,000 people per judicial district, rather than the current cap of 50,000. According to Caruso, this would allow the legislature to create up to 266 additional Supreme Court judgeships while still providing 'guardrails for each district.' Dinowitz told New York Focus that he tried to come up with a proposal where 'every place around the state could more easily benefit.' 'Some of the backlogs were exacerbated as a result of the pandemic, and so some of that is starting to ease a bit. But nonetheless, there is a need,' Dinowitz said. 'I do think that lowering it to 30,000 will address the problem for the indefinite future.' 'My concern with the other bill — and I'm not saying it's a horrible bill, because it's not — is that everything would go to one place, like Manhattan,' Dinowitz said. 'The way I've proposed it, I think it will guarantee some fairness.' For a proposed constitutional amendment to go onto the ballot, a measure must pass in two separately elected legislatures. Elections are held every two years, with the next one coming November 2026. So even if the Dinowitz proposal were passed this year or next, it still would require passage again in 2027 or 2028 to go on the ballot. Because the Uncap Justice Act passed the legislature last year — before 2024 elections — it could pass either this session or next year and still be on the ballot in November 2026. But Bores is pushing for passage this year and is close: The proposed constitutional amendment is poised to be voted on by the full Senate, though it still hasn't passed through the Assembly Judiciary Committee. Caruso said that last year, the legislature moved so quickly to pass the Uncap Justice Act that his group didn't get a chance to 'lobby the way we wanted to. It kind of came out of nowhere, without any discussion with us.' While his group still faces an uphill battle, Caruso said that some assemblymembers jumped behind the Uncap Justice Act without hearing counterarguments and have now reconsidered. 'There were some Assembly people that initially supported the Bores bill that, when we talked to them, they said, 'Oh, geez, we didn't realize that,'' he said. 'So now, they switched to the Dinowitz bill.' The association did lobby the legislature last year, according to Bores. Since then, the Assembly cosponsors have only grown, from 52 to 73. Two members took their names off after being lobbied by the association, but after speaking to Bores, have returned, he said. The Dinowitz bill currently has seven Assembly cosponsors. Ultimately, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie will decide which bill, if any, moves to the Assembly floor for a vote. Facing the rival proposal, Bores believes Uncap Justice is the only proposed means of permanently addressing the crushing backlog. The constitutional language 'was last changed in the 1960s,' Bores said. 'When it's changed the next time, none of us who are in this conversation will be part of it. So do we want to pass this problem on? Or do we just want to solve it?'
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Four Things to know about the New York Prison System's ruling family
— This story first appeared in New York Focus, a non-profit news publication investigating New York state politics. Sign up for their stories at New York's state prison commissioner, Daniel Martuscello III, is catching flak from every direction. Since December, when the state attorney general released video of prison guards beating an incarcerated man to death, Martsucello has faced calls for resignation from prisoners' rights activists and corrections officers alike. Some of the former see him as the kingpin of a brutally violent system; the latter as a gutless reformer who doesn't have their backs. He's faced protests, national outrage, aggressive inquiries from horrified legislators — and, most recently, a wildcat strike from his guards. Through mediated talks with the officers' union on one hand and promises for reform on the other, he's been working around the clock to keep both his commissionership and the state prison system itself from falling apart. How did Martuscello find himself here? While his tenure as prison chief is less than two years old, he's no stranger to New York's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS. He came of age in the agency, and knows its ugly side better than anyone. This week, New York Focus published an in-depth investigation into Martuscello's ascent. The result of a year and a half of reporting, the article reveals his role as scion of a state prison dynasty. It details not only the commissioner's rise to power, but his father's, brother's, siblings', in-laws', and that of his family's friends across the system. Thousands of pages of previously unreleased documents and testimony from incarcerated people, advocates, officials, and over a dozen current and former DOCCS staff tell the story of a man who's found himself at the center of a firestorm, torn between his professed progressivism and his background in a shadowy system. Here's what you need to know. Daniel Martuscello III is the eldest child of a New York prison dynasty. Dan Martuscello is second-generation DOCCS. His father started as a guard in the late 1960s and rose through the security ranks, eventually becoming superintendent of a maximum security prison. The elder Martuscello was an old school prison boss — simultaneously aggressive and savvy — with deep connections throughout the agency. He was such a DOCCS institution that some contemporaries simply referred to him as 'the Old Man.' The Old Man raised six children, all but one of whom launched careers in the prison agency. Three worked under their father's watch at his prison, as did three of the Old Man's sons-in-law. Dan, the Old Man's eldest, is the family's suave politician. 'He's very astute politically,' said Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit that the state tasks with overseeing prison conditions. He's won over key elected officials in the state government's Democratic majority, as well as some prisoners' rights advocates, who say he's as accessible and humanitarian as one can hope from the head of a sprawling 42-facility carceral system. Before his confirmation as permanent prison commissioner, sources described him as long destined to take over. Dan's brother Chris has also spent his years seeking power; he's shot up the ranks of DOCCS's internal investigations office. In contrast to Dan, Chris inherited his father's rough edges. Former staff describe him as a hot-headed tyrant whose main mode of leadership is intimidation. The dynasty is the center of a patronage network. Its main hub is the prison agency's internal accountability office. The Martuscello prison family functions as the focal point of a patronage network, according to former staff and documents. It has taken advantage of DOCCS's culture of favoritism, wherein employees in sought-after posts often have benefactors who helped secure their cushy or lucrative assignments. The network is so embedded in DOCCS that staff have dubbed it the 'friends and family' program. The friends and family network spans across the prison agency, from its nursing corps to administration to security ranks to its training and education programs — though its main hub is Chris's internal investigations office. That office — now called the Office of Special Investigations, or OSI — is responsible for digging into wrongdoing against both incarcerated people and prison employees. Traditionally staffed by former corrections officers, OSI allows the prison agency to police itself. Incarcerated people and advocates describe it as a black box, quick to absolve officers and adept at keeping DOCCS wrongdoing out of the public eye. It closes at least hundreds of unresolved officer abuse cases a year. A former head of the office was an old friend of the Martuscellos (until a state investigation found him covering for one his beneficiaries, an alleged serial harasser, and he retired). The Old Man used that connection to ensure that his family could get plum posts in OSI, per former staff and documents. Chris transferred to the office and quickly ascended its hierarchy, as did a buddy from Chris and Dan's corrections officer days, the Old Man's closest friend, the eldest Martuscello daughter's then-husband, and others. The Old Man even directed one of his sons-in-law to a specific post within the office, steering him away from an unpopular 'rat' unit responsible for digging into complaints of officer abuse. Around the time Dan became commissioner in 2023, other Martuscellos and members of their network also ascended. Chris became an assistant commissioner — and second-in-command of OSI — as did Chris and Dan's eldest sister, a longtime DOCCS nurse. One of the brothers' friends had risen to OSI's third-in-command, while their brother-in-law and family friend had become higher-ups within OSI's specialized investigative units. 'The Martuscellos — they all get hooked up,' an OSI staffer told state authorities. 'They got this juice.' Consequences of alleged nepotism have reverberated across the prison system. The friends and family network has made enemies on its path to power. Chris has been particularly aggressive about forcing people out of positions he wants for his favorites, former staff allege. That has not only led to internal DOCCS controversy, but contributed to some of the agency's biggest scandals of the last decade. Case in point is the story of Al Montegari. In 2014, Montegari was named head of OSI's sex crimes unit. According to court documents, he quickly called attention to problems in OSI, particularly within the unit Chris Martuscello was leading at the time. Roughly a year into Montegari's tenure, Chris and Dan worked to remove him from office, with Chris spearheading a seemingly bogus disciplinary investigation into him. Even though a hearing officer found him not guilty of most disciplinary charges, Dan, then a deputy commissioner, stripped Montegari of his OSI title — leaving the spot open for the brothers' friend, who was soon hired into it. The Montegari incident resulted in double blowback for the Martuscellos. Montegari sued over the alleged retaliation, and a jury eventually awarded him $500,000. (DOCCS is appealing.) His ouster from OSI also left a temporary vacancy atop the sex crimes unit. That forced Montegari's former deputies — whose abilities he'd said he doubted, according to court records — to sign off on investigators' work. While Montegari was suspended, his unit was digging into a complaint regarding rumors of an inappropriate relationship between a civilian employee and an incarcerated person. The investigator closed the case as 'unfounded,' and unit deputies signed off on it, even though the investigator didn't search the incarcerated person's cell, which would have been standard, former staff said. If he did, he may have found tools — and a hole behind the man's bed. Three weeks later, the incarcerated person and his friend escaped. The civilian employee had smuggled them the tools. and she'd been sending love notes to one and having sex with the other. The 2015 escape from Clinton Correctional Facility was a national scandal: It became the subject of a Lifetime movie, a Showtime miniseries, and an episode of Law & Order: SVU. The future of New York's state prison system hangs in the balance New York Focus's investigation into the Martuscello family illustrates how the state prison commissioner came up through a corrupt system. It also shows that he's a complex figure, delicately balancing his liberal persona with his status as a corrections lifer. Dan Martuscello's standing among prison staff is in the tank. Striking officers laughed off his initial demands that they return to work, forcing DOCCS to agree to recently announced concessions. Some have called for his resignation. His unpopularity is partly a result of what online materials circulating among officers describe as his family's 'nauseating' nepotism. That unpopularity also stems from the fact that guards associate him with forces trying to alter the dynamics undergirding the prison system's brutality. He has heeded some calls for reform after Brooks's killing. (Elected officials are calling for further scrutiny after guards at a prison across the street from where Brooks was killed reportedly beat another man to death over the weekend.) Guards have also railed against his willingness — however reluctant — to implement a statewide solitary confinement reform law, which they've tried to overturn since before it went into effect. That law not only shielded incarcerated people from the torture of indefinite isolation, but stripped guards of some of their power to punish incarcerated people arbitrarily. Meanwhile, incarcerated people and their family members are up in arms over continued abuse, they've told New York Focus. How Martuscello balances the demands of the 14,000 guards who work for him and the welfare of the 33,000 people in his custody will determine the future of a system that's shown itself to be a powder keg. As his past becomes clearer, the future of the agency he leads becomes more uncertain.
