Back from 100 Centre Street

Alan Arkin, LaTanya Richardson, Paula Devicq, Joseph Lyle Taylor, and Manny Perez were among the regulars on the regrettably short-lived A&E series 100 Centre Street, depicting judges, prosecutors, and public defenders whose lives intersected inside New York's busiest court building, which also houses the District Attorney's office. The series was created by Sidney Lumet, who wrote and directed the pilot and wound up writing eight and directing nine of the eventual 30 episodes.

by Ken

On my first day of jury duty last week, our clerk Larry (I never did catch his last name), who was responsible for our maintenance and for matching us to the jury needs of, I believe he said, 15 Supreme Court and 10 Criminal Courts judges in the building, explained that he always likes to have a judge address his new jurors (yes, we were his jurors, just as the judges were "my" judges, etc.), warning that the moment the great eminence appeared, to accommodate that august personage's jam-packed schedule, whatever we were doing would cease immediately. When the Great Man duly appeared, he told us that the building we were in at least used to be -- he wasn't sure whether it still is -- the highest-volume court building in the country. The building is also (I think I've got this right), using a different entrance with its own address, One Hogan Place, the main office of the New York County District Attorney's office. And, oh yes, part of the building is part of the current incarnation of the (in)famous jail attached to the court complex, The Tombs.

The building is 100 Centre Street, and for as many million times as I've walked past it, I don't think I'd ever set foot inside it before last week. Oh, down the block, 60 Centre Street, the main New York County courthouse and administrative center, there I've been lots of times. Earlier in my going-on-40 years of jury service in New York County (that's Manhattan to you outsiders), that's where jurors always assembled for assignment to the various court locales. Eventually it was explained to us that a selected portion of the massive jurors' assembly room at 60 Centre was used as the principal courtroom on Law & Order! Later the system was changed so that new jurors reported directly to one of the various jurors' assembly rooms in the various buildings with working courtrooms that are part of the state's Unified Court System. Almost invariably I wound up in 111 Centre, which is right across the street from 100, and in my earlier days there housed Civil Court exclusively, and civil cases were all I encountered for a lot of years. Then 111 came to house both civil and criminal courts.

The Criminal Courts Building is located on the block surrounded by Centre, Leonard, Baxter and White Streets. It currently houses the Criminal and Supreme Courts, the District Attorney, Legal Aid, offices for the Police Department, Department of Correction, and Department of Probation.

The Criminal Courthouse was designed by Wiley Corbett and Charles B. Meyers. Construction began in 1938 and was completed in 1941, at a cost of $14 million. The site, formerly known as Collect Pond, had been the location of the old 1894 Criminal Courthouse and the old Tombs prison.

The seventeen-story Art Deco courthouse has a steel frame and a granite and limestone facade. The building is composed of four towers in front, with a jail behind. The taller center tower is stepped, like a ziggurat. The windows and spandrel form vertical bands alternating with the stone piers. The imposing entrance consists of two huge, freestanding granite columns. A wing designed by the Gruzen Partnership was added in 1986.

-- from the nyc.gov website

Back in what are now remembered as the Bad Old Days of jury duty, I loved spending that week or two (as I recall, we rarely served the full two weeks but were rarely let go short of one) in the jurors' room of 111 Centre. Sure, the accommodations were primitive -- basically, just a bunch of not-very-comfortable chairs. But there was also a soda machine and, more important, the bad-coffee machine a person could pump quarters into all day. That's right, a single quarter got you a smallish cup of piping-hot bad coffee, or if you were really desperate, bad hot chocolate or bad chicken soup. (Sometimes you felt the need to check the color of the liquid to remind yourself which you'd gotten.)

And there was also a small bank of pay phones -- yes, those were the days when there were still pay phones -- thanks to which I had the ideal arrangement: I could be in touch with anyone I wanted to, but nobody could reach me! And creature-comfortless though the place was, I could read all day when I wasn't going through voir dire, or actually serving on a jury, for those unimaginably boring civil cases. Even in the days before now-retired Chief Judge Judith Kaye's massive overhaul of the jury-service system, small changes were made, like the introduction of a TV viewing room, which mostly added a noise component, since the kind of stuff one's fellow jurors dictated would be viewable was generally unwatchable.

Most important, of course, a stone's throw away there was Chinatown for lunch. I don't even remember how long it's been since my usual dumpling place closed. I've managed since, but it hasn't always been easy. (I'm not good about trying new places.)

One of Judge Kaye's central reforms was dramatically expanding the jury pool, using more lists to locate potential jurors and eliminating automatic exemptions for previously exemptable professions. The more people who were available for jury duty, she reasoned, not only the more representative would the jury pool be, but the less time would be required from each juror. She also instituted a serious upward revision in jurors' pay. I recall it being $10 a day plus carfare, which I thought was swell since I pocketed that loot on top of my regular salary. Now the rate is $40 a day (with nothing added for carfare), but those of us who are employed and being paid by our employers don't get anything from the state. That makes sense, I guess. Sigh.

I remember Judge Kaye working at improving the actual physical conditions for jurors, but there wasn't much evidence of it in the jurors' room at 100 Centre, where you aren't even allowed to bring food or drink in, though there's a small jurors' lounge nearby where you can, er, indulge. So, not even no bad-coffee machine -- no coffee at all! (There is WiFi, though, and lots of my fellow jurors brought their own computers. There's even a little annex room with notebook computers available for general use.)

But then, I understand that this is an old building, and a serious working one. I even felt bad late on that first day when I realized that at lunchtime I had broken two rules I suddenly became aware of posted on the walls outside the courtroom to which I'd been assigned that morning, as part of a pool of 90 prospective jurors sent to Part 61 for the start of a criminal trial. We'd been sent out to lunch early, with instructions to report back at 2:30, but I was in and out of the place I decided to try (yes, I tried a new place! no big deal, though -- I realized afterward that the only reason I got out so cheaply was that they forgot to charge me for my soup and charged me only for my dumplings) that I was back at 100 Centre by 1:30, figuring I'd check out the cafeteria to which I'd seen signs pointing all over the ground floor, planning on relaxing, maybe having some dessert while I read -- good times! But the "cafeteria" turned out to be a standard-issue take-out counter! I got some coffee and figured it would make most sense to take upstairs and drink on one of the benches outside the courtroom, which I did.

What I discovered later was that: (1) That floor is closed between 1 and 2pm, and (2) on that floor, food and beverages are prohibited! Oops, and oops! In a building full of cops and criminal-intake personnel, I figure they would have known what to do with the likes of me if I'd been caught sitting out in the open sipping my contraband coffee for half an hour.

According to the New York Criminal Lawyer Blog, "published by Jeremy Saland":

Regardless of the crime or crimes you are charged with in New York County (Manhattan), the arrest process or a desk appearance ticket (DAT) will ultimately land you along with your criminal defense attorney at 100 Centre Street...the nexus of all criminal prosecutions in Manhattan. 100 Centre Street is where you will be taken from a precinct or Central Booking for your arraignment before a Manhattan criminal court judge (on certain occasions a case is arraigned in the Midtown Community Court). If your criminal defense lawyer is unable to resolve your case at your arraignment, whether you are initially charged with a misdemeanor or a felony, 100 Centre Street is where you will return for the immediate future for court appearances.

By the way, notwithstanding our specified 2:30 return time, it wasn't till about 3:10 that we were actually called back into the courtroom. At the end of the day we spent another 45 minutes or so out in the hall, which has only a few benches, not nearly enough to accommodate our group, waiting to be told finally, at nearly 5:30, that those of us who had already been questioned were done in that courtroom, to report back to the jurors' room the next morning. This is much later than people are normally kept in the courthouse, but then, I understand that the judge was trying to keep jury selection on pace (there were still more jurors from our group of 90 to be questioned in the morning). And there was consolation for me that if I'd been at work on a normal workday, I'd have been at my desk till 6.

My second day was much less eventful. At lunch I was more adventurous and ventured to a more distant and distinctly humbler but much more satisfying place, with not-such-great hot-and-sour soup but great and inexpensive pork buns and lovely dumplings; I will definitely go back there. Our overseer Larry had told us that we could expect to be dismissed at the end of our second day, unless we were in a courtroom, in which case we would be under the control of the judge. His deputy informed us that their office had persuaded two courtrooms that were contemplating calling for jurors to put it off till morning, and not much past 3, we were discharged.

I'm up for service again in six years, I was told.

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