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In Brooklyn, a night in jail often lasts longer than one night. Sometimes it can drag out over two or even three nights.

Last month, the city’s criminal courts reduced their weekend hours, shortening shifts in response to state budget cuts. Court officials promised to monitor the dockets “hour by hour and day by day” to ensure that prisoners were arraigned promptly.

But the result has been what defense lawyers feared: People arrested may wait for days before appearing in front of a judge, particularly in Brooklyn Criminal Court, which handles the highest volume of arraignments.

State law requires that the authorities bring defendants before a judge “without unnecessary delay,” which the state’s highest court has interpreted to mean 24 hours under normal conditions.

But in Brooklyn, many defendants arrested on relatively minor charges are waiting far longer. The backlog grows on weekends, when arrest numbers climb and the courts scale back their hours.

Andre Parker, 45, a construction worker, was arrested Friday evening for tossing a lottery ticket to the ground and then refusing a police officer’s order to pick it up or show his identification, according to the officer’s account. Mr. Parker said he was not arraigned until Sunday afternoon. While waiting in a holding cell in the courthouse, another person “was throwing up blood,” Mr. Parker said.

When Mr. Parker was finally arraigned, the judge said his case would be dismissed if he stayed out of trouble for six months, a common disposition for low-level offenses.

“It took me three days,” Mr. Parker said of the time he spent waiting to see a judge. “It was ridiculous.”

On Tuesday, court officials pledged to add more hours to weekend shifts to increase the number of arraignments in Brooklyn Criminal Court. “We recognize that it was certainly not acceptable to continue on the current path,” David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Court Administration, said.

On average, the time between arrest and arraignment in Brooklyn during recent weekends was just under 31 hours, according to statistics provided by the mayor’s office. Last summer, before the courts reduced their hours, the average time was just over 24 hours on the same weekends.

By Monday morning, 170 of the 292 defendants waiting to see a judge in Brooklyn Criminal Court had been arrested more than 24 hours earlier, according to statistics provided by the Legal Aid Society. Some had been arrested on Friday.

“People shouldn’t be spending two or three days in jail” waiting to see a judge, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said in an interview.

Mr. Feinblatt has been urging the court system since last month to schedule more time for arraignments.

“It’s not working,” he said of the courts’ reduced hours. “We’re left reaching the obvious conclusion that we need to go back to a schedule that we had before so that we can meet our legal obligations.”

Mr. Feinblatt added that the problem was not confined to Brooklyn.

“We’re seeing problems elsewhere, as well,” he said. The average arrest-to-arraignment time on the weekend in all city courts was just over 26 hours.

Legal Aid lawyers said that abiding by the 24-hour arrest-to-arraignment time limit was especially important in light of the large number of people arrested for minor infractions that rarely result in prosecutors’ seeking jail time. In one recent week, 294 people arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court had their cases immediately dismissed or were given adjournments in contemplation of dismissal, meaning their cases, like Mr. Parker’s, would be dismissed if they stayed out of trouble for six months, according to statistics provided by Legal Aid.

In such cases, each day spent waiting in jail is one more day of incarceration than the judge would have imposed.

“A lot of these people should never even spend an hour in central booking,” said one lawyer, Julie Fry, who is vice president of the Brooklyn division of the union representing Legal Aid lawyers.

In many instances, the police can decide whether to send someone they arrested before a judge or to issue the person a court summons called a desk-appearance ticket, thereby freeing the person after several hours of arrest.

In police slang, the tickets are dismissively referred to as “disappearance tickets” because of the risk that the recipients will not show up for their court dates. In Brooklyn, the number of desk-appearance tickets issued rose 39.5 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to statistics provided by the mayor’s office.

Noah Rosenberg contributed reporting.

After Budget Cuts,
Defendants’ Wait to See a Judge Often Exceeds 24 Hours,
NYT,
19.7.2011,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/
nyregion/new-york-budget-cuts-lead-to-longer-waits-for-arraignment.html

Saudi Man Accused in Bomb Plot

to Be Arraigned

March 28, 2011
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A Texas college student from Saudi Arabia who is accused of buying chemicals and equipment to build a weapon of mass destruction is set to be arraigned.

The arraignment for Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari (al-daw-SAW'-ree) is scheduled for Monday morning at the federal courthouse in Lubbock. He faces up to life in prison if he's convicted of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Court documents allege he had hatched plans to attack various U.S. targets, including New York City and former President George W. Bush's Dallas home.

Aldawsari was arrested Feb. 23. Court records indicate that federal agents traced his online purchases, discovered extremist online posts he made and secretly searched his apartment, computer and e-mail accounts and read his diary.

Saudi Man Accused in Bomb Plot to Be Arraigned, NYT, 28.3.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/28/us/AP-US-Terror-Bomb-Plot.html - broken link

Tucson Suspect Pleads Not Guilty

January 24, 2011

The New York Times

By MARC LACEY

PHOENIX — Jared L. Loughner, who the police said was responsible for the shooting rampage outside a Tucson supermarket on Jan. 8, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that he tried to murder Representative Gabrielle Giffords and two of her aides.

Appearing in Federal District Court alongside his defense lawyer, Judy Clarke, Mr. Loughner entered a written plea to Judge Larry A. Burns of San Diego without uttering a word.

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and wearing glasses, Mr. Loughner, 22, smiled through most of the proceedings and chuckled when a clerk read out the name of the case: the United States of America v. Jared Lee Loughner.

Ms. Clarke offered no objection to a request by Wallace Kleindienst, an assistant United States attorney, to move the court proceedings to Tucson. But Mr. Kleindienst, who is considered an expert in murder cases, indicated that Ms. Clarke would have additional opportunities to push for the trial to be held elsewhere.

The indictment unsealed against Mr. Loughner was preliminary, prosecutors have said, and did not involve any of the other shooting victims. A superseding indictment is expected to be filed after more investigation.

During the arraignment, which was conducted under high security, Judge Burns asked Ms. Clarke whether she had any concerns about her client’s ability to understand the case against him. “We are not raising any issues at this time,” she said.

The prosecution on Monday turned over to Ms. Clarke records from Mr. Loughner’s computer and transcripts of 250 witness interviews.

The shooting, which left six dead and 13 wounded, is expected to be addressed during President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, as several people who helped the wounded have been invited to attend.

Daniel Hernandez, the intern who gave first aid to Ms. Giffords after she was shot and who was called a hero by Mr. Obama during his speech in Tucson on Jan. 12, will attend, along with Peter Rhee, G. Michael Lemole Jr. and Randall S. Friese, all doctors who treated her at University Medical Center, said C. J. Karamargin, Ms. Giffords’s spokesman.

Also expected to be in attendance is Tracy Culbert, a trauma and intensive care nurse who treated Ms. Giffords. On Friday, Ms. Culbert accompanied Ms. Giffords on her flight to Houston, where her recovery is continuing in an intensive care unit at Memorial Hermann hospital. When her health improves, she will be transferred to the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research at Memorial Hermann.

Over the weekend, Dr. John Holcomb, a trauma surgeon at Memorial Hermann, said Ms. Giffords could not begin intensive rehabilitation right away. He said a slight buildup of spinal fluid in her brain after her transfer by air to Houston from Tucson on Friday made it impossible to shift her to the rehabilitation center in the complex.

The congresswoman has a catheter draining fluid from her skull, part of which was removed to relieve pressure after the shooting