Here's How Long Felony Cases Take To Slog Through NYC Courts

NEW YORK — New York City's criminal courts seem just as sluggish as its public transit. The typical felony case in the city takes more than a year to slog through the system, a pace far slower than the rest of the state, a report released Wednesday shows.

The city's Independent Budget Office examined the number of days that 2017 felony cases took to reach a final disposition from the time of arrest and compared waits in the city to the rest of the state.

The roughly 15,000 felonies in the five boroughs that year took a median of 424 days to reach some final resolution, the report shows — nearly 50 percent longer than the median of 288 days for about 13,000 cases elsewhere in New York.

While every outcome takes longer in the city, the statistics indicate the disparity is even greater for cases that go to trial.

The 587 felony cases that in the city ended in a conviction by guilty verdict in 2017 lasted a median of 683 days, or close to two years, the IBO found. That's more than 71 percent longer than the median length of 398 days in the rest of the state, according to the figures.

The city's 234 cases that ended with an acquittal trudged on for a median of 623 days, nearly double the median of 330 days those kinds of cases lasted elsewhere, the report found.

By contrast, the more than 11,000 city cases that resulted in conviction through a plea deal were the quickest with a median length of 392 days, the report shows. That's about 37 percent longer than the median of 286 days that such cases took in the rest of the state.

But even felony cases in which the charges were dismissed took a median of 581 days to resolve in the city — more than twice as long as the rest of the state, the figures show.

The analysis comes on the heels of reforms in Albany aimed at speeding up the state-run court system. The state budget passed last week includes legislation requiring courts to cut out unnecessary delays and make sure all parties to a case are ready for trial, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office has said.

Lawmakers say the legislation was partly inspired by the case of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who died by suicide after spending three years jailed on Rikers Island waiting to be tried on charges that were ultimately dismissed.