The Broken System: Black Defendants Forced To Wait Trials For Years

Innocent people from black communities are waiting for the judicial examination for so long that some of them decide to plead guilty in order to terminate agonizing uncertainty.

It’s not a secret for anyone that American judicial system is more loyal when it comes to white people with money and coat-tails than to minorities. The perfect example of these double standards is the time required for the appointment of the judicial examination which is disproportionately long in cases concerning black people.

Despite the fact that every citizen of the country has a fast trial right, Black and Latino people still have to waste their mental health in nervous anticipation which sometimes lasts for years.

Most of the people who can’t finally see their court day, accused of small insignificant offences, like breaking the window, or in some cases they are wrongly charged.

On Wednesday, May 11, 2016  Bronx Defenders – advocacy civil rights group – has filed a lawsuit against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; Janet DiFiore, Chief Judge of the State of New York and Chief Judicial Officer of the Unified Court System; and Lawrence Marks, Chief Administrative Judge of the Unified Court System. The accusation claims that named people couldn’t provide justice for people of the Bronx County by putting aside the day of their trial.

According to statistics, in January 2016 there were already 2,378 cases that haven’t been reviewed in the court for 365 days, and 538 cases that have been waiting almost for 2 years.

“You have to wait 99 percent longer in the Bronx.  You wait longer in the Bronx than any other borough…It speaks to how we resource certain communities and under-resource others,” said Robin Steinberg, the Executive Director of the Bronx Defenders.  “This has been a known secret for years, and we hope to compel some change.”

The people who are forced to wait for months or years for their trials usually suffer from different social problems, some of them lose their jobs, other face incomprehension in their families, although most of them have done nothing bad.

The lawsuit hopefully will finally manage to restore judicial justice in the Bronx County but the same problem hits black people all over the country, we need complex reform of the system to make it equally fair for every citizen.

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