Tag: ALC Court Watch

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COVID-19 News and Updates

Justice Reform Advocates File Suit Against Allegheny County Judge Over Lack of Public Access to Court

Breaking! Lawsuit Filed! No to secret courts! We demand transparent public virtual access! Judge Mariani has denied us access to over 100 hearings! Quote from ALC Court Watch director Autumn Redcross. photo of Mariani and url of press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Andy Hoover, ACLU of PA, media@aclupa.org
William Lukas, Abolitionist Law Center, wjlukas@alcenter.org
Jonathan de Jong, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection, reachICAP@georgetown.edu

PITTSBURGH – An Allegheny County judge is facing a federal constitutional lawsuit filed today by Abolitionist Law Center after the judge’s refusal to allow virtual access to his court proceedings. Judge Anthony Mariani has repeatedly denied online access to volunteers with ALC’s Court Watch program and has only allowed the public to observe his court’s hearings in person at the county courthouse, despite a directive from both the court administration and the state Supreme Court that judges should provide online access to the public as a COVID-19 mitigation strategy.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, ALC argues in its filing that public access to courts is a First Amendment right.

“A public court is not only foundational to democracy, but integral to addressing mass incarceration and keeping judges accountable for their decisions – many of which are racialized and have contributed to apartheid in Allegheny County,” said Autumn Redcross, the director of ALC’s Court Watch program. “In the midst of a year-long global pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black and brown communities, it is not sufficient to say, ‘the courts are accessible,’ simply because the buildings are open.

“It is unethical to expect community members to risk their health and lives to show up in person to observe an alleged public hearing, when the judge can provide the public with remote access.”

Since January, ALC volunteers have requested access to more than 100 hearings, all of which have been denied by Mariani. Typically, those asking for access receive a form email that states that the public can observe hearings in the judge’s courtroom. But in February, Mariani’s chambers stopped replying to inquiries by ALC’s volunteers as to why they could not have virtual access.

Mariani is the only Allegheny County judge who has refused to grant access to hearings via online video conferencing, in all his cases without exception. In its complaint, ALC notes that nine court employees tested positive for COVID-19 between January 10 and February 10 and that all had visited court facilities, including one member of Mariani’s staff.

“We jump through all the hoops set up by the Fifth Judicial District for safe, remote access, but, instead of access, I get form emails denying me and telling me to attend in person,” said Erica Brusselars, the volunteer coordinator for ALC’s Court Watch program. “Judge Mariani is actively obstructing safe public access to his court. He is impeding transparency in a way that hurts public discourse, hurts our tradition of open courts, discourages an engaged citizenry, and blocks people from seeing our criminal legal system.”

“Courts operate openly, not in secret, and this judge cannot be allowed to escape scrutiny while refusing to implement common sense strategies to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

“All courts must be open, and the stakes couldn’t be higher than in criminal court, where judges make critical decisions that impact people’s liberty and freedom,” said Nicolas Riley, senior counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

In its filing, ALC is asking the federal court to require virtual access to Mariani’s proceedings, for a ruling that his behavior is in violation of the First Amendment, and for attorneys’ fees and costs.

The lawsuit, Abolitionist Law Center v. Judge Anthony M. Mariani, has been filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. ALC is represented by Witold J. Walczak and Sara J. Rose of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and Nicolas Y. Riley, Robert D. Friedman, and Jennifer Safstrom of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center.

A copy of the complaint filed today is available for download below and also available at aclupa.org/ALC.

alc_w.d._pa._-_complaint_with_exhibits_3-2-2021_finalDownload
Categories
COVID-19

Pandemic, Black Pittsburgh and ACJ

by Autumn Redcross

Black people in the United States are contracting and dying from complications due to coronavirus at disproportionately high rates.

This is reflective of historical inequalities attributed to underlying medical conditions – emerging from embodied racism, anti-Black policies, and socioeconomic systems. The increased likelihood of Black people to work in the category of “essential workers”, along with a greater need to use public transportation, have more frequent store trips, and have elders living in in multigenerational households, means greater chance of exposure to COVID-19[1]. Black people are also at increased risk because their symptoms are often ignored by medical industry professionals or even themselves. Due to lack of health insurance, mischaracterization of disease, or spiritual belief, we, as Black people, may even ignore or downplay our own symptoms. Widespread myths and conspiracies alluding that Black people have a natural immunity to the virus have also been circulated through and by my community.

However, Black and Latinx people are dying at twice the rate of their white counterparts in New York City. Forty percent of those lost due to the coronavirus in Illinois and Michigan have been African American, although they only account for 15% and 14% of the populations. Black people make up thirty percent of the of Louisiana’s population, yet make up 70% of those in the state who have died from complications associated with coronavirus. Surely the trend persists, but most states have not yet released numbers concerning the racial demographics of those tested, diagnosed, or deceased from complications of the virus. Pennsylvania is one of those states.

The majority of Pennsylvania’s coronavirus cases are situated in the Philadelphia area, Harrisburg, State College and the counties of Montgomery and Allegheny. In an attempt to discern the proportion of the overall population to coronavirus patients, The Tribune Review published an article listing the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and the surrounding townships where testing results were positive, noting that Black neighborhoods were not among them. Yet the Tribune’s statistics do not account for the jail population which is situated in downtown Pittsburgh.

Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) detains 1,778 men, women, queer and trans people, and children. Although the jail population has dropped some 28% because of public health concerns in lieu of coronavirus, the number of people still constitutes a small town, in which 59% are Black. On Wednesday April 8, the Allegheny County Department of Health confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in ACJ. In the same week, SCI Phoenix confirmed its first case. As of April 9th, there are 8 confirmed cases at Phoenix.

Twenty-five prisons across the state of Pennsylvania house 44,299 people. Approximately 46% of those inmates are Black, while 10% are Latinx. Subjected to unsanitary conditions and without access to adequate health resources, the high risk of aging and medically vulnerable Black prisoners go beyond the already elevated risk of being Black in Pennsylvania, and more specifically, being Black in Pittsburgh.

This past fall, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh published a damning study on the city’s inequality across gender and race. The report illuminated that “Black women and men in other cities have better health, income, employment and educational outcomes than Pittsburgh’s Black residents.” Compared to white Pittsburghers, Black residents were found to have higher rates of maternal mortality, unemployment, poverty, occupational segregation, homicide, cancer and cardiovascular disease . The gruesome density of Black and Brown people warehoused by the Department of Corrections exacerbates these already dire realities and racial disparities of health and justice in Black Pittsburgh.

COVID-19 poses a threat to souls around the globe. It’s a pandemic, which means it is what it does. As for the souls of Black folks, the record will show, if not in numbers, surely in our narratives, the consequences of being Black in America, and being Black in Pittsburgh. The fact is, we’re closer to death and dying in America’s “most livable city”. And so much closer, while in her jails and prisons.

This is what systemic racism looks like.

Edits and graphics by William Lukas

Notes:

[1] Information gathered and presented on by Dr. Cathleen Appelt from conversations with Black scholars, medical doctors and public health professionals, at the behest of a community engagement project initiated by reentering citizen Lewis Alexander.

[2} “What this means is that if Black residents got up today and left and moved to the majority of any other cities in the U.S., automatically by just moving their life expectancy would go up, their income would go up, their educational opportunities for their children would go up as well as their employment,” – Junia Howell, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Howell, Junia, Sara Goodkind, Leah Jacobs, Dominique Branson and Elizabeth Miller. 2019. “Pittsburgh’s Inequality across Gender and Race.” Gender Analysis White Papers. City of Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission

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