HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001 Village Court Annual Report.PDFN6QT
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Glenn G. GafbreathVillage of Cayuga Heights Justice
ANNUAL REPORT OF GLENN G. GALBREATH, VILLAGE iN'STICE
There was a modest increase in the case numbers this past year.
FolJowing the summary of data immediateLy beJ-ow is a narrative
about the data, other court activitjes of the year, and threeproposals for next year. More detaiLed court data r.s attached at
pages 9-11.
Of particufar note are the three proposals (pages 5*7) for:
/1\ qalor-f inn a nar^r nnmnttf ,\-/ -er pfogTaml(2) shifting away from commerciaJly produced docket report
ana
(3) substituting a laptop computer for the desk top model
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SUM}TARY OF CASE ACTIVITY'
fnrm <
the
/-- ^^ tTl_, ^^
Vehrcle + Trafflc Law (V+TL)
F.a rki nnr
Criminal (excluding V+TL)
Civil/Small Claims
TotaJ- Cases
TotaJ- Monies CoJ-fected
2000
1243
L:-'7
20
0
1380
$ 59,146
2001_
1338
IB2
22
1
1533
$ 68,516
Number of V+TL Triafs
Because of the manner in which data is presented by our computer,
figures in this report refl-ect cases cfosed during the cafendar
the court actual-l-v worked on more cases than are shown above.
5352
1
most of the
Jsor. f lIuD,
Vehicle and Traffic cases (see attached chart at page 9. )vehic]e and traffic law matters account for the majority of thecourtts cases, the fines and surcharges collected, and t.he courtclerkrs time. white the totar number of vehicle and trafficcases is a bit higher than rast year, there are only a fewdifferences worth notinq.
We saw a dramatic increase in number of Failure To Obey A Trafficcontrol Device (FTorcD) charges. They used to be reported in the"other" category when we saw few of them. But now that they areused much more frequentry, they have their own category.
The reader may note that there is a relatively large number ofdismissed cases - sg2 of the 1338 vehic]e and traffic cases.Probably 90-95* of those cases were charges of: expiredrnspection or registration stickers, not having a diiver'sl-icense or insurance card in the vehicle at the time of the stop,or minor equipment violations. If the defendant presented proofto the Court that s/he actually had val-id insurance and drj_ver,sIj-cense, her/his registration or inspection only recently expiredand was quickly renewed, or the equipment violation was minor andimmediately corrected, then the court frequently dismissed thecharge with a warning. Thus, the driver was spared a monetarypenalty, and the public was protected by bringing the defendantinto furl compliance with these regal rlquirements.
Parkinq (See attached chart at page 9.)Parking tickets are usually processed administratively by thePofice Department and the court ci-erk without the need for myintervention. Therefore, the parking ticket statistics areseparated from the ot-her vehicle and traffic matters. onryoccasionally do r have to hol-d a trial or even review adefendant's response to a parking ticket. Nevertheless, thecourt clerk must always process the paperwork and often arrangefor payment of the fines. The number of parking ticketsincreased from ]71 in 2OO0 1,o IB2 in 2OOI"
Criminal- Cases (See attached chart at page 10.)criminaf cases is one of the most important categories andincludes non-traffic violations, misdemeanors, and felonies. AII-the data reported in the attached detailed chart is based oncases cfosed in 20ar and uses the specific charge originallybrought against the defendant. It does not reflect the charge towhich the defendant ultimately pled nor whether the case was
dismissed- Arso, because of fimitations in the computer,sprogram for colrecting data and to avoid doubr-e .o,rrrtir,g, theannual report does not incrude in the,,criminaf,,category some of
;::rTl:o."T.:u?or" and feronies rhar arise under rhe Vehicfe andr r or r ru Lciw (e. g. aggravated unlicensed operat.ion, leaving the
:::::^:t ::^tljury, accidenr, drivins while inroxicated, recktess.-rrvrtl9/ cLU'i ' lnerefore, the number of criminaf cases asactually higher than reported here. rn any case, the annualnumber of criminar- cases is armost identical to -rast year andcontinues to be r-ess than one third of what it was six years ago(61 in 1996 and 22 in 2OOI) .
v4v++/ ','rcrrr uraf,-ms cases (see attached chart at page 11. )
,T::?i.::11u, .:Ii.a case:s are different from Small ctainrs caseswhile they both have the same monetary jurisdiction of $3,000,
:::^l:::.: uses an expedired procedure lno is more ,,consumer
'LrrendJy. " Thus, we armost never see cases filed in the ,,civiI,,category. In terms of numbers, civil_/smalf claims cases make upthe smalfest category of casesr e.9. fandlord*tenant marrers,consumer transactions, contract disputes over bills forprofessionaf services. These cases tend to be very timeconsuming and often require ronger: trials and written opinions.The court routiner-y refers these rltigants to the communrtyDispute Resorution center, but does ,,ot delay the courtproceedings whir-e the non-fitigation alternative is berngrconsi-dered or used. The number of these cases changes rittre.rn 2002 we had only 1. rn the past five years we never had moret.han 4 in a year.
( Seeattached chart at page 11.)The total fines and surcharges coflected has increased. rn 200Lwe coflected $ 68,3!6, up from $ 59,146 in 2000" UnfortunateJ-y,there was also a corresponding increase in the amount of money asyet unpaid by defendants: g tA,AZS in 2OOI versus $ tZ,l3O in2000.
Tria].s
The number of triar-s reffects only those hefd in vehi-cr-e andtraffic law cases. There is no simpte method through thecomputer to cofrect data for civlr and criminar_ triJfs, so thoseare not reported. Nor do we incrude in the figures r-ate nightarraignments or search warrant requests, pretrial hearrngs,motion arguments, issuance of orders of protection, declarations
of delinquenCv, revocations of probation r or sentencings. AIIthese activities are time consuming and critical courtactivities ' In any instance, while the actual number of trialsand hearings is higher than shown here, the number this year (53)is effectively the same as last year (52) . The highest number ofsuch trials in the recent past was I24 in lgg5.
Miscellaneous
r attended two one-day sessions of the Advanced continuingJudicial- Education Program at Tompkins County Community Collegein April and in october, 2oor. During the April sessron, rpresented the fecture to the justices on Substantive Civif Lawand for the October session did the lecture on Judicial Ethics.Patricia Button, the court clerk arso attended crerkshiprefresher training sessi-ons in April and october, 2ooL. rnDecember, 200r r performed my annual- inspection of the TompkinsCounty Jail.
Court Equipment and Record Systems Upgrade
some of the issues raised berow are probably the mostsignificant, because some relate to potential short term costs inthe upcoming year and long term savings thereafter. They afsowitl need Trustee approval at. some point.
The copy machine used by the Court was one we inherited from thePolice Department, and it functioned quite wetl for a number ofyears. rt is now in need of approximately $400 in repairs. Thecourt has been limping along with the court,s fax machine thatal-so can copy documents, atbeit quite slowly, and we have accessto the Village copier upstairs. occasionally these alternatj-vesare burdensome when needed during court. sessions, but we arewilling to continue as we are in light of more pressing needsbelow.
We are considering several changes to our data collection andrecord keeping systems. These arise from problems we encounterdue to the timing and methods of our case information col-Iection(in person during court, by phone, and by mail), recording (by
hand written notes or by computer), and retention (on writtendocket sheets, individual case files, and in the computer files) .The changes we are considering simplify the corlection and
ronnr1- i na nf i nf ^r--f .i ^^rspur Lrrrg \rr rri!orltrarl-on/ would be less subject to errors, andshould save the Village money in the long term because they wouldnot requrre commercially printed forms and binders and should
understood that it waslast week that it was
not due until l_ate March and onlv learneddue February 18, 2002.
should you have any questions or comments about the report,please contact me or the court crerk. Further, r remind everyonethat the court sessi-ons are hetd every Tuesday evening andusually the first rhursday of every month, all st.arting at 6:00PM' The public in g.t ".rr- and you in part.icurar are invited toobserve t.hese sessions.
Dated: I'ebruary Lf , 2002 Respectfully
Gl-enn G. Gal_breath
Village Justice
'i | 1- arl
substantially reduce the number of hours required bv the Cferk.
Thus, w€ would like to do the fo1lowing.
First, we wourd ]ike to replace our computer program. ourpresent program is old and inefficient. It does not compile evenbasic data on our cases. For example the program cannot:- show the total dol-lars owed by defendants or by scofflaws;print the complet.e case file information;identify which vehicle and traffic marrers are al-so
misdemeanors and felonres;give us information on the finaf disposition of criminalmal-ters or the original charges on vehicle and trafficmatters (thus the Annual- Report provides different tvpes ofdata for each); nor
teII us the number
Basically all the program
individual case, but does
the data from those cases
As a result, the cferk spent approximately j-B 20 hourscompiling data by hand for this Annual Report I with a proper
computer program/ it would have taken no more than a few secondsand the data would be fess prone to human error. we berieve we
may be able to secure a better program through the office ofcourt Administration and are making inquiries now. Tnat program
k^ ^-,^i I ^L1^fllay oe avarrable at no cost. Even if we neetl to pay for aprogram (and they can cost $5,000+) and/or its continuingsupport, the cost wou]d be recovered over the long term by thehours the Clerk wou-Ld not have to spend collecting and recordi-ngdata by hand.
second, we would l-ike to shift from the bulky, expensive
/=nn-^*-i'--+^1" (1nntapproxrmatery vruv I,E! yedr) and time consuminq handwrittendocket sheets that we keep on each case and move to computergenerated docket sheets. The present system requires us topurchase forms from a commercial printer, re-enter by hand alfthe case information previously entered into the computer, andthen store the docket forms in oversized and expensive binders.
The better alternative is to record and save the information onetime only by entering it into the computer and then simply
nrin'l-ina 1_ h=t- fril l r-omr.rrr1_ ar f i la An ranrr'l .- ot ooAprrilLI-II9 LIIdL ev,LLyuLUr !vyqrq! D!.su yey€I. ThUS,
we would still- have both a paper and electronic copy of theinformation; the information would be identical in bothlocations; storage space needed for the paper copies would be
of trials we held.
does is store information on each
not all-ow us to compile or correl_ate
dramatically reduced,. we woufd not pay thedocket forms or binders,. and the ""p"n"u ofdoing duplicate entries would be saved. Inestimates thal_ she woufd spend 2 _ 3 hoursthe proposed system. This brings us to theproposaf.
extra cost for special
the Cferk's time infact, the Clerk
fess each week under
third element. of the
Third, we wourd J-ike to purchase a raptop comput.er in place ofthe desktop computer- The clerk coll-Lcts and enters informationin the records both in the office and in the courtroom. Theproblem wit'h the desktop computer is that it cannot be moved backand forth between the t.wo rooms and, thus, sits in the office.But most of the information the cferk must enter is taken fromhandwritten notes she makes while in the courtroom during courtsessaons " She then has to key that handwrltten information intothe desktop computer. she also is required to handwrite it ontothe formaf docket forms. Af r- these additionar- steps cost thecferk (and thus the village) 2 - 3 hours,of her time each week.
rf the cl-erk had a laptop computer, she courd enter afr- thernformation one time during the court session. she could therebyavoid having to make handwritten notes in the courtroom and thenkey them into the computer rater. FurLher, we courd dispensewith the commercially produce docket forms and use compurergenerated docket printouts. Thus, whenever the cferk needs apaper copy of the computer docket form (maybe at the originalarraignment and at the cl-ose of the case), she could simpry printone on inexpensive and prain white regular srzed paper.
A laptop computer can cost between $1,000 to 2,000. f do notpresume to know enough about them to suqgest a particular modelor brand' The cferk intends to check *iti other courts and Jeffsil-ber to get reconrmendations on what woul-d be most appropriate.There is also the possibirity of reapplying for another New yorkstate .Tustice court Assistance program grant to assist incovering the cost of such a computer. The clerk indicates thatthe next application,/funding cycle starts rn August, 2002.
Conc].usion
r am particurarly interested in the Trustee,s reaction to ourproposals to reprace our basic computer program and to purchase alaptop computer. r wilf attempt to attend the meeting wherethese matters are discussed. i afso aporogize for this reportbeing presented late in the process. The crerk and r had
\TEHICLE AI{D TRAFFIC LAVI
i_998
s51
1B
0
6
5
5
L6
4
10
2B
20
B;
't 52
45\
6
1201
6',1
B5
NIATTERS
1999
4L2
14
4
4
7
3
29
1
I9
10
43
10
5
613
536
3
7209
69
99
2001-
2000
403
L4
3
5
3
4
13
B
L4
45
36
4I
5
59
653
590
10
1243
52
7L1
2007
435
21
o)
10
2
11
1
ZJ
5
)'1
J.L
T4
23
5
5
73I
592
1sl
1338
53
782
OFFENSE2
SPEEDTNG
STOP SIGN
FTOTCD (see page 3)
DW]
DWAI
FL. KP" RT.
NO PASS ZN.
UNLIC. OP"
susP. /nnv.Lrc.
UNREGTD. M/V
UNINSPCT . M/V
EQUTPMENT
SEATBELT
INSURANCE
OTHER
rOTAL CONVICTIONS
TOTAI, DTSMISSED
lA.C.D.3
TOTAL V+TI. CASES
V+TI TRIAT.S
PARKING TICKETS
J-997
350
1B
1
2
4
2
9
3
5
22
B
5;
414
300
4
178
54
732
SCoFF'LAI{ED CASES4 29 704 B B 7I4 1 4e
- The data contained in these specific categories reffect the charge oniii:: :l:,::f.ifi:":.?:;.::i:,"."o .;J-;;;-";;;;;",i1y rhe charse orisinalry- A'c'D' stands for "adjournment in contemplation of dismissa-l,, and meansthat the peopre, defendant, and judge agreed tl alfow the case i:o be placed"on hold'" during which time the defendint's activities are superv.rsed and,/orregulated' rf at the end of the time defendant rs successful, his,/her case isdismissed. rf not, then the case is revived. A.c.D.s are used rarely, andonly in those situations where everyone agrees that the mandated penaltyfPPears wholly inappropriate for the particufar defendant and circumstances.- "scofffawed casesrr are those where a defendant faifs to appear on atraffic ticket or {3rls to pay the fine. The crerk notifies ttre Nv Departmentof Motor Vehicl-es (DMV) and-sirspends the defendant,s driver's l-icense rf thedefendant does not reso-rve ttre tic:<et q"i.ki;.'**or course, if it rs a seriouscase/ the court wir--l sometimes issue an arrest or bench warrant.
CRTMINAIJ ITATTERSs- 2OO7
ALCOHOL
ALCOHOL IN PARK
ASSAULT
AGG. HARASST.
BAD CHECKS
BURGLARY
CRIM. CONTEMPT
CRIM. IMPERSONAT.
CRIM. MISCHIEF
CRIM. POSS. FRGD.
CRIM. POSS. STOLN.P.
CR]M. POSS. WEAPON
CR]M. TAMPERING
DOG ORD.
DISORD. COND.
DISP. WASTE
EAVES DROPPING
EAVES DROPPING EQPT.
FALSE BUSIN. RECORDS
FALSE WIT. ST.
F]REWORKS
FUGTT]VE
GRAND LARCENY
HARASSMENT
M/Y, UNLAWFUL USE
PARK/ IN AFTR. HRS.
PARK LAWN
PET]T LARCENY
POSS. CONTL. SUBST.
PUBL]C LEWDNESS
RAPE (ATTEMPTED)
RECKLESS ENDANGMT.
SCHEME TO DEFRAUD
SELL CONTL. SUBST.
TRESPASSING
UNLAWFUL M]NOR
ZONING
OTHER CRIM]NAL
TOTAL
5 -,'-Lne oata
defendant " It
charge reduced
above reflects the originalrs posslbl-e thaL eventuallyor dismissed.
1999
5
0
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
0
0
0
0
5
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
,1
charge brought
the defendant
agarnst the
was acquitted or the
1997
3
.)
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
1
5
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
5
21
L 998
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
2
9
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
4
31
2000
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
2
0
0
0
2
2
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
1
20
200t
0
0
2
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
'9
0
2
a
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
zz
10
crvrl CASES 20AL
t997 1998 1999 2000 2001CIVIL/SMALL CLAIMS
CASES43401
ALI FrNEs ' FEES AIID suRcIIAReEs 2ooL
The figures below incr-ude the total monies collected for all-fi-nes, parking fines, civir fees, and mandatory surcharges.
t991 1998 1999 2oo0 2001..LLECTED $ +g ,025 12,45t 56, 065 59,7 46 68, 516
MONIES OWED BY
DtrFENDANTS
AT
'EAR END $ 6, 560 9,91"4 L3, BB0 1_2,730 L6,425
F: \JUSTTCE\Ann-npts\Ann-rep-Ol.wpd 11