Manhattan courthouses adapting
Safety measures used to resume trials while pandemic continues
The two big, busy federal courthouses in Manhattan took the adage that justice delayed is justice denied to heart when the coronavirus hit, creating a pandemic-safe environment for jurors that could be a blueprint for courts elsewhere.
After months of inactivity, they are holding trials again with a safety system that includes an air-filtered plexiglass booth for witnesses, an audio system that lets socially distant lawyers exchange whispers without putting their heads together and protocols to ensure that no document changes hands without being sprayed with disinfectant.
More than 100 trials are already scheduled this year, and a month after jury trials resumed following a post-thanksgiving halt, there has been no traceable spread of COVID-19 at the courthouse, according to its chief administrator, District Executive Edward Friedland.
That’s important because some of the nation’s oldest judges sit in the two courthouses.
When trials initially halted a year ago as the pandemic hit the city, Chief Judge Colleen Mcmahon formed a committee to explore how to resume safely. Friedland tapped the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for expertise. Soon, an epidemiologist was on board, along with an air flow expert.
A CDC expert who had designed airtight hospital bed units with HEPA filters helped develop plexiglass booths where witnesses safely sit maskless, preserving a defendant’s right to confront an accuser.
Only nine jury trials were conducted in the fall, but there have been seven since midfebruary.
The simultaneous trials are in contrast with Brooklyn federal court, where Federal Defenders Attorney-in-charge Deirdre von Dornum said judges were cautiously scheduling three trials in April to prevent multiple juries in the courthouse at once.
“It would be better for the clients to have more trials sooner, since the postponements obviously harm people’s trial rights, but on the other hand, a jury scared of contracting COVID is unlikely to be engaging fully with the concept of reasonable doubt!” she wrote in an email.
In Manhattan, six of 40 courtrooms in a courthouse that opened in the mid-1990s have been reconfigured, as have two others across the street in an 85-year-old courthouse.
Jurors fill nearly half of each courtroom, spaced apart in an elevated section. Each receives a packet with hand sanitizer, masks, gloves, disinfectant wipes and a forehead thermometer. Double masks are mandatory.
In court, lawyers at long tables whisper into special phones, their voices amplified for their team by a technology borrowed from roadies communicating backstage at long-ago rock concerts. Microphone covers are replaced with each speaker.