Shortened Weekend Arraignment Hours in Queens Makes Hiring a Private Lawyer Even More Important
Beginning June 11, 2011, as a cost saving measure, Queens County weekend criminal court arraignments will operate on reduced hours, from 11:00 AM through 9:30 PM. Under the older system, weekend arraignments operated from 9:00 AM through 1:00 AM.
For those with loved ones or friends in the arrest to arraignment process in Queens on the weekend, this new system makes hiring a private queens criminal lawyer for the arraignment that much more important.
The Problem: Many Cases but Less Time to Do Them
The weekend is frequently the busiest time of the week for arraignments. Furthermore, shortening the amount of time devoted to arraignments on Saturday and Sunday will likely diminish the number of arraignments that can be done on those days. Lots of cases plus less time to do all those cases will likely create a backlog of cases as the weekend progresses.
Therefore, those arrested on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in Queens may now be at greater risk of spending a night in prison that they might otherwise not have spent. When this new weekend policy takes effect, not having a private attorney could easily make the difference between seeing the judge and spending the entire night in a prison cell for the next day's arraignment session.
Why Would Having a Private Attorney Make a Difference ?
One of the advantages of having a private attorney is that a private attorney is in a position to be following and monitoring just the one case through the system. Therefore, when the case is ready, there need be no lag time before the private attorney can alert the court that the case is ready to be arraigned.
The same is not true for the cases done by the assigned lawyers (public defenders). The point in time when the clerk delivers the court papers to the assigned lawyers marks the beginning of the process for the assigned lawyers, as opposed to the immediate moment when the case can be added to the line of cases ready to be called.
This difference in time until readiness for arraignment is simply an indication of the reality that the assigned lawyers require a certain amount of time to prepare their files, familiarize themselves with the cases, and interview the clients.
To understand this it is important to understand how the process works.
When the paperwork is brought out to the assigned lawyers, it comes out in a stack called a "run". Each run may have quite a few cases in it. The following things must happen once that run is delivered to the assigned lawyers' clerk:
- The cases must be reviewed by the clerk for conflicts
- Files must be prepared for each case
- The assigned lawyers must decide how to distribute the cases amongst themselves
- The assigned lawyers must review each of the case files they have taken
- The assigned lawyers must then interview each of their five or six clients individually
- The assigned lawyers then submit the notices of appearances for each of the people they have interviewed
- the cases are put in line to be called
All of this takes time.
Usually, a private lawyer will have had sufficient advance notice of the case to have already familiarized himself with the facts, and often has already spoken to the client. Therefore, unlike the situation with assigned counsel, as soon as the court papers are ready, the private lawyer is usually in a position to get the case put in line to be called.
Therefore, if you have private counsel monitoring a case and ready to respond in the arraignment courtroom, that case may well be placed in the line of cases to be called and seen by the judge quicker than it would be if the case had to be processed by the assigned lawyers.
With less time devoted to arraignments on the weekends, the difference in time could make an even more dramatic difference than during the week. With less time for arraignments to happen, there will be fewer arraignments done, and arraignments are generally called on a first come first served basis. Therefore, the quicker a case is added to the line of cases to be called, the greater the likelihood that it will actually be called before arraignments are closed for the night.
Missing the last arraignment on a Saturday night at 9:30 PM, for example, will condemn a person to spend the night in a prison cell and then not even have a chance of getting out until at least 11 AM Sunday morning.
If you would like information about hiring a Queens criminal defense lawyer who can help with an arraignment on a criminal case in Queens, call Shalley and Murray at 718-268-2171. You will be able to reach a lawyer 24 hours a day.