Mourning an Unconscionable Tragedy 

A man died in a holding cell in Brooklyn yesterday. He had been incarcerated for more than three days, waiting for an arraignment, because he allegedly stole $213 worth of goods from Home Depot – an accusation that, under the 2019 Bail Reform law, should have resulted in a ticket. He should never have been arrested, let alone held for over three days.

Court Watch NYC mourns this tragedy, as well as the tragedies of the four other people who have been killed by the actions of cops, judges and prosecutors, shielded by the NYC carceral system, in the past month. Our watchers were in arraignments on Friday to observe a moment of silence for him.

What our watchers then saw on Friday afternoon was a highly unusual series of arraignment hearings that laid bare the grotesque absurdity of this system.

In a courtroom suddenly packed with people bearing witness, the prosecutors didn’t ask for bail in a single case—no matter how “serious” the charge. Instead, they consented to release or supervised release for each person.

This shows clearly that when the system starts to feel exposed, it just lets everyone go. If these “offenses” are worthy of prosecutors requesting bail for one day and suddenly not the next, then clearly these categories are arbitrary and meaningless. The events on Friday crudely underscored the unnecessary cruelty of detention for crimes of poverty.

Throughout the afternoon yesterday, our watchers also saw multiple people arraigned who had been held for 40+ hours, including people who had been fasting for Ramadan, someone who had been denied a phone call to ask for someone to feed his dog, and someone who missed a scheduled surgery. While the amount of time they had been held was atypical, the stories of how a single arrest sets in motion events that can upend and destroy lives are devastatingly normal stories that our watchers see every single day in court.

Our thoughts are with the man who needlessly lost his life at the hands of this terrible system on Friday morning, his loved ones, and all of those who remain cruelly caged by the state. 

We are watching, we are witnessing and we will continue to share what we see.

In Solidarity,

Court Watch NYC