Hundreds of guilty pleas later, fix-it judge readies to leave Bronx

Posted October 21, 2013 By Charlotte Greenfield

Judge Patricia DiMango has only been on the Bronx bench since January. In that short time, she has done the seemingly impossible: cleared hundreds of cases off the docket in the city’s most clogged criminal court.

Court administrators reassigned DiMango from Brooklyn to reduce a massive backlog of cases in the Bronx, a borough where defendants languish in jail for months — and often years — before they complete a trial. The judge has in a matter of months negotiated hundreds of plea bargains, closing stalled cases on the spot.

Judge Patricia DiMango was assigned to close out hundreds of backlogged criminal cases in the Bronx. Photo: Alice Brennan

But DiMango’s stint in the Bronx will wrap up in November. The Supreme Court’s administrative judge, Douglas McKeon, said she will likely return to Brooklyn. This has left court officials wondering who will take the place of DiMango, whose newly created court, Part 85, is at the heart of this year’s push to speed up justice in the Bronx.

From the shortlist of candidates, all of whom are Bronx judges, one of the major considerations will be the judge’s track record of getting guilty pleas, McKeon said. “If somebody resolves cases by plea in greater numbers than their colleagues, the likelihood is that they have a skill in that way,” he said. “We have statistics upon statistics. We have every judge, we can tell how many cases they’ve disposed of, how many by plea.”

While court administrators have embraced guilty pleas as a way to flush stalled cases through the clogged court system, many criminal defense attorneys in the court see matters differently.

“That people always plead guilty because they are in fact guilty is a complete myth,” said Karen Smolar, a Bronx public defender. “People plead guilty for all kinds of reasons.”

She says that a lot of her indigent clients have opted for a guilty plea, uncertain they would be found innocent at trial. Others had no money to post bail nor could they afford the foregone income if they had to be in court for a long time. Many clients, said Smolar, decide to plead guilty to a lesser offense and accept a less severe sentence even if they were innocent.

“Then they throw them into a court with a judge who’s aggressive about taking a plea and scares them in to thinking they’re screwed if they don’t take a plea. They think, ‘I’m going to take a plea because she scares me,’” Smolar said.

As for DiMango, Smolar charges, “She’s talking to clients in ways that are inappropriate. The client has the right to remain silent. That’s why we speak on their behalf of them —we are their mouthpiece.”

DiMango talks directly to defendants, often admonishing their crime or lifestyle choices, something Smolar said has made it difficult for her clients not to respond despite their right to remain silent. Her approach contributes to an environment in which defendants can feel emotional pressure to plead guilty, Smolar said.

“In most courtrooms if a client says to a judge, ‘I want to speak’, most judges will say, ‘This probably isn’t a great idea’ and will suggest their lawyer speak on their behalf.”

DiMango said she talks directly to clients about their option to plead guilty, not because she intends to bully them but because she wants to help them turn their lives around.

“I try to scare them straight. Somebody has to. That’s my goal. I take a parental role,” said the judge, adding, “I don’t want to coerce anyone into a plea.”

She flatly rejects the suggestion that she coerces defendants into plea bargains.

“I think the system itself has good checks and balances. Between the prosecutors [and] defense counsel I think there’re good lawyers. If someone says, ‘I didn’t do this,’ I wouldn’t even talk about a guilty plea,” the judge said.

Smolar disputed the suggestion that defense attorneys are always able to protect their clients from the pressure placed on them in DiMango’s court. “In my experience it’s very difficult to step in” when DiMango addresses clients directly, she said. “I’ve tried, and she didn’t respond.”

DiMango pores over each defendant’s case notes sitting at her bench sandwiched between the silver letters spelling out “In God We Trust” adorning the wall above her and a typed piece of paper taped to the front of her podium instructing “Answer ONLY the question that was asked.” She then looks up ready to strike, sometime addressing the defendant with concern, sometimes with anger.

McKeon views DiMango’s proactive relationship with defendants as a benefit. “She has remarkable people skills. She is able to talk to defendants face to face, directly, bluntly in a non-nonsense way and effectively spell out their options,” he said, then added: “Many judges believe that that’s not their role.”

‘I’m going to motivate you’

One Tuesday morning in Part 85, DiMango took issue with a 20-year-old defendant who admits he does not have a job or go to school.

“I’m going to motivate you,” she advised defendant Donovan Hinds, who was before her on a robbery charge. “I’m going to have you do something, or put you in jail.”

“Ok,” replied Hinds contritely.

Hinds’ lawyer, public defense attorney Lois White, jumped in to defend in her client when DiMango compared him doing ‘nothing with his life’ to her getting up to come to work each day.

“He doesn’t have the background you have,” White said.

Dimango looked around and asked whether anyone else in the courtroom went to school or works. Another young defendant put his hand up and said he is in school.

“So it’s not just me,” DiMango retorted.

Hinds and the prosecution spend the next ten minutes or so working out technical matters, before Hinds officially agrees to plead guilty to third-degree robbery in exchange for being sentenced to an alternative incarceration program and five years probation. Failure to comply, Judge DiMango informed him, will result in a jail sentence.

“If you screw up, don’t come back and say, ‘Please give me a second chance,” she warned. “This is your second chance.”

Hinds’ case had only been before the courts for a month, but many of the approximately 4,000 cases currently before the Bronx Supreme Court have dragged on much longer. Nearly 500 cases on the docket have been there for two years or more.

But that’s a whole lot less than the 900 cases pending when DiMango’s courtroom opened up in January. At the time, state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman called the slow pace of justice in the Bronx “unacceptable.”

In nine months, DiMango has dissolved just over 600 cases, many of which had been in the court system for years.

‘There’s not enough of them’

Even as hundreds of cases are dropping off the docket because of plea bargains, the number of cases going to trial is also up sharply, by 32 percent since last year.

All those trials require personal attention from judges. Since taking over administrative judge this year, McKeon has restructured the courts for speed, creating alongside Part 85 a special courtroom for domestic violence cases as well as assigning some judges permanently to trial courts and others to focus only on pre-trial hearings.

But ultimately, even if McKeon finds another judge to fill DiMango’s shoes, the Bronx courts will be hard pressed to keep up with all the cases that continue to stream in.

“It’s one thing to remove the backlog. It’s another to keep it down,” said Peter Jones, the attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s Bronx Criminal Defense office. “The judges are doing a good job, but there’s not enough of them.”

Michael Marinaccio, a criminal defense lawyer and chair of the Bronx County Bar Association, praised the court administration’s efforts to reduce the backlog, but agreed that the downsizing of the bench, combined with budget cuts in 2011, resulted in a “very real prospect of doing more with less.

“There’s a point,” said Marinaccio. “Where the backlog overflows.”

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<h1>Hundreds of guilty pleas later, fix-it judge readies to leave Bronx</h1>Judge Patricia DiMango has only been on the Bronx bench since January. In that short time, she has done the seemingly impossible: cleared hundreds of cases off the docket in the city’s most clogged criminal court.
Court administrators reassigned DiMango from Brooklyn to reduce a massive backlog of cases in the Bronx, a borough where defendants languish in jail for months — and often years — before they complete a trial. The judge has in a matter of months negotiated hundreds of plea bargains, closing stalled cases on the spot.
<div id="attachment_12662" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12662" class="size-medium wp-image-12662" alt="Judge Patricia DiMango was assigned to close out hundreds of backlogged criminal cases in the Bronx. Photo: Alice Brennan" src="http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BRONX-SUPREME22-300x169.jpg" width="300" height="169" srcset="thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BRONX-SUPREME22-300x169.jpg 300w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BRONX-SUPREME22-352x198.jpg 352w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BRONX-SUPREME22-500x281.jpg 500w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BRONX-SUPREME22.jpg 568w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Judge Patricia DiMango was assigned to close out hundreds of backlogged criminal cases in the Bronx. Photo: Alice Brennan</div>
But DiMango’s stint in the Bronx will wrap up in November. The Supreme Court’s administrative judge, Douglas McKeon, said she will likely return to Brooklyn. This has left court officials wondering who will take the place of DiMango, whose newly created court, Part 85, is at the heart of this year’s push to speed up justice in the Bronx.
From the shortlist of candidates, all of whom are Bronx judges, one of the major considerations will be the judge’s track record of getting guilty pleas, McKeon said. “If somebody resolves cases by plea in greater numbers than their colleagues, the likelihood is that they have a skill in that way,” he said. “We have statistics upon statistics. We have every judge, we can tell how many cases they’ve disposed of, how many by plea.”
While court administrators have embraced guilty pleas as a way to flush stalled cases through the clogged court system, many criminal defense attorneys in the court see matters differently.
“That people always plead guilty because they are in fact guilty is a complete myth,” said Karen Smolar, a Bronx public defender. “People plead guilty for all kinds of reasons.”
She says that a lot of her indigent clients have opted for a guilty plea, uncertain they would be found innocent at trial. Others had no money to post bail nor could they afford the foregone income if they had to be in court for a long time. Many clients, said Smolar, decide to plead guilty to a lesser offense and accept a less severe sentence even if they were innocent.
“Then they throw them into a court with a judge who’s aggressive about taking a plea and scares them in to thinking they’re screwed if they don’t take a plea. They think, ‘I’m going to take a plea because she scares me,’” Smolar said.
As for DiMango, Smolar charges, “She’s talking to clients in ways that are inappropriate. The client has the right to remain silent. That’s why we speak on their behalf of them —we are their mouthpiece.”
DiMango talks directly to defendants, often admonishing their crime or lifestyle choices, something Smolar said has made it difficult for her clients not to respond despite their right to remain silent. Her approach contributes to an environment in which defendants can feel emotional pressure to plead guilty, Smolar said.
“In most courtrooms if a client says to a judge, ‘I want to speak’, most judges will say, ‘This probably isn’t a great idea’ and will suggest their lawyer speak on their behalf.”
DiMango said she talks directly to clients about their option to plead guilty, not because she intends to bully them but because she wants to help them turn their lives around.
“I try to scare them straight. Somebody has to. That’s my goal. I take a parental role,” said the judge, adding, “I don’t want to coerce anyone into a plea.”
She flatly rejects the suggestion that she coerces defendants into plea bargains.
“I think the system itself has good checks and balances. Between the prosecutors [and] defense counsel I think there’re good lawyers. If someone says, ‘I didn’t do this,’ I wouldn’t even talk about a guilty plea,” the judge said.
Smolar disputed the suggestion that defense attorneys are always able to protect their clients from the pressure placed on them in DiMango’s court. “In my experience it’s very difficult to step in” when DiMango addresses clients directly, she said. “I’ve tried, and she didn’t respond.”
DiMango pores over each defendant’s case notes sitting at her bench sandwiched between the silver letters spelling out “In God We Trust” adorning the wall above her and a typed piece of paper taped to the front of her podium instructing “Answer ONLY the question that was asked.” She then looks up ready to strike, sometime addressing the defendant with concern, sometimes with anger.
McKeon views DiMango’s proactive relationship with defendants as a benefit. “She has remarkable people skills. She is able to talk to defendants face to face, directly, bluntly in a non-nonsense way and effectively spell out their options,” he said, then added: “Many judges believe that that’s not their role.”
 
<h3>‘I’m going to motivate you’</h3>
One Tuesday morning in Part 85, DiMango took issue with a 20-year-old defendant who admits he does not have a job or go to school.
“I’m going to motivate you,” she advised defendant Donovan Hinds, who was before her on a robbery charge. “I’m going to have you do something, or put you in jail.”
“Ok,” replied Hinds contritely.
Hinds’ lawyer, public defense attorney Lois White, jumped in to defend in her client when DiMango compared him doing ‘nothing with his life’ to her getting up to come to work each day.
“He doesn’t have the background you have,” White said.
Dimango looked around and asked whether anyone else in the courtroom went to school or works. Another young defendant put his hand up and said he is in school.
“So it’s not just me,” DiMango retorted.
Hinds and the prosecution spend the next ten minutes or so working out technical matters, before Hinds officially agrees to plead guilty to third-degree robbery in exchange for being sentenced to an alternative incarceration program and five years probation. Failure to comply, Judge DiMango informed him, will result in a jail sentence.
“If you screw up, don’t come back and say, ‘Please give me a second chance,” she warned. “This is your second chance.”
Hinds’ case had only been before the courts for a month, but many of the approximately 4,000 cases currently before the Bronx Supreme Court have dragged on much longer. Nearly 500 cases on the docket have been there for two years or more.
But that’s a whole lot less than the 900 cases pending when DiMango’s courtroom opened up in January. At the time, state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman called the slow pace of justice in the Bronx “unacceptable.”
In nine months, DiMango has dissolved just over 600 cases, many of which had been in the court system for years.
 
<h3>‘There’s not enough of them’</h3>
Even as hundreds of cases are dropping off the docket because of plea bargains, the number of cases going to trial is also up sharply, by 32 percent since last year.
All those trials require personal attention from judges. Since taking over administrative judge this year, McKeon has restructured the courts for speed, creating alongside Part 85 a special courtroom for domestic violence cases as well as assigning some judges permanently to trial courts and others to focus only on pre-trial hearings.
But ultimately, even if McKeon finds another judge to fill DiMango’s shoes, the Bronx courts will be hard pressed to keep up with all the cases that continue to stream in.
“It’s one thing to remove the backlog. It’s another to keep it down,” said Peter Jones, the attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s Bronx Criminal Defense office. “The judges are doing a good job, but there’s not enough of them.”
Michael Marinaccio, a criminal defense lawyer and chair of the Bronx County Bar Association, praised the court administration’s efforts to reduce the backlog, but agreed that the downsizing of the bench, combined with budget cuts in 2011, resulted in a “very real prospect of doing more with less.
“There’s a point,” said Marinaccio. “Where the backlog overflows.”