When the New York Times runs an editorial with the headline, Repairing New York’s Justice System, my pulse quickens and breath grows short.  Could this be the one that finally deals with the wholesale absence of discovery, the use of flawed identifications to convict the innocent?  Maybe they will finally nail testilying cops to the wall?  Is it the death knell of the Rockefeller drug laws, putting mules in prison forever for a couple ounces of dope?

Then comes the opening line:

New York’s justice system has fallen into crisis. Yet Albany is not dealing with three big problems dragging the system down — missing judicial pay raises, glaring deficiencies in indigent defense services and the swelling workload overwhelming Family Court.

Sigh.  I know it’s been a slow couple of weeks in the criminal law field.  No hot new murders.  No major new issues before the Supremes.  But this is just pathetic.

In the broadest sense, New York’s justice system has fallen into crisis, though it’s been happening for as long as I’ve been practicing law and will likely be the same on the day I die.  It’s a perpetual battle and it always will be.  We will never achieve a perfect system.

But crisis?  The Times raises two issues that have been on the burner for years, and are not significantly different today than they were yesterday.  Or last year.  Of all the many things that are wrong with the Justice system, these hardly rise to the level of crisis. 

The Times isn’t wrong about the first and second, though the thirds reflect something of a misunderstanding of the problem.  There are underutilized Supreme Court judges around the state, given the drop in crime.  Personnel can be shifted to cover the gaps, and systems can be better organized to make things move more effectively.  Also, add 39 more judges and you need 39 more courtrooms and staff. 

My issue here is that there are problems with the system of justice, and there is always going to be plenty of need for improvement as we strive to figure out how to deliver more perfect justice, a goal that will never be achieved.  But to make every burp and pothole in the system into another claim that the sky is falling is needlessly and unhelpfully hysterical. 

Judges salaries don’t rise to the level of consequence as convicting the innocent.  A statewide indigent defense system, which is primarily a cost-saving plan, is important but will still take years to implement, and will have its own problems along the way.  And 39 more judges in a juvenile justice system that is rife with internal systemic error is hardly as important as participants who take personal interest in the children they exist to help rather than the rote application of rules.

The system is not in crisis today any more than it was in crisis yesterday.  It just has problem that can, and should, be dealt with.  But let’s save the chicken little act for when it counts.