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Friday, February 2, 2018

Allegany County: Public Defender says counsel at arraignment is working

Submitted to Allegany County Public safety Committee
COUNSEL AT FIRST APPEARANCE (CAFA) JANUARY 2018

As you know, the Public Defender’s Office began our program to provide counsel at all arraignments on January 2, 2018. This is being done under the auspices of our CAFA Grant from the NYS Office of Indigent Legal Services. I want to provide the Public Safety Committee with a brief summary of our efforts thus far. The data supplied below covers the period of January 2nd -28th.
The Public Defender’s Office was made aware of 67 total criminal arraignments occurring in the Allegany County Courts during this period. Our presence was not requested in 18 of those cases. Those 18 were cases where appearance tickets had been issued upon arrest, and where bail or release on recognizance (ROR) were not an issue. Our on-call attorneys were contacted to appear in 49 cases. We appeared and covered the arraignments in all 49. Of those, 30 clients were ROR’d; 17 clients were incarcerated; 1 was released on pre-trial supervision from the bench; and 1 case was concluded at arraignment.
Generally speaking, we have had excellent cooperation from County Dispatch, the various police agencies and the local justice courts. Two common reservations were expressed prior to inception of this program. One was that there would not be enough arraignments to justify the procedures we were putting into place. So far, the numbers belie this objection. Secondly, many of the Justices were concerned that they would have to wait an inordinate amount of time for the attorney to appear. The average wait time has been kept under 30 minutes. As always, I am available to answer any questions you may have.
Respectfully submitted,
Barbara J. Kelley, Allegany County Public Defender