PAUL STEINBERG LETTER. THOUGHTS ON THE VILLAGE COURT, ALI JAFFERY'S CONDUCT AND MORE

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To the Editor:

I am in the minority of Croton residents who support shutting down the village Justice Court. But it is neither necessary nor fair to smear Sam Watkins in the process.

Croton politics has become calm in recent years. Even in more contentious times, attack dogs were normally local surrogates, not the candidates themselves. But if candidates for Mayor or Trustee got into the mud, the candidates for village justice remained above the fray. A judge should exhibit judicial temperament, and that includes civility and refraining from casting personal aspersions on their opponent.

This year has seen a new strategy by the Croton Democratic Party bosses. Not only has a candidate gone on the attack, it is the candidate for village justice. I object to both the shabby treatment of Sam Watkins, and also to the lack of candor on the part of Maria Slippen and Len Simon.

No village justice has taxing authority. That is true of incumbent Watkins and it would be true of any successor. It is the Croton Board of Trustees (including Ms. Slippen and Mr. Simon) which sets the budget within which the Croton Justice Court operates.

In February 2022, Village Manager Healy proposed elimination of the entire Village Justice Court. He claimed that the expense of operating the court was $363,270 that fiscal year and that elimination would save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. None of the trustees proposed adding full-time interpreters or establishing a night court. None of the trustees expressed concern about violation of the rights of non-English speaking defendants.

There was significant debate as to whether Mr. Healy’s computations were correct: Mr. Watkins says the cost is actually $12,000. In addition, many residents opposed shutting the court on the grounds that the court was part of village identity.  

In typical Croton governance, Mr. Healy recently proposed spending $37,500 on a consultant to tell us whether the court should be eliminated.

Mr. Watkins opposed eliminating the village court. I disagree with Mr. Watkins, but the residents of Croton have backed Mr. Watkins—both in 2022 and again in 2026. In between those two attempts by the Board of Trustees, the Croton Democrats dumped Mr. Watkins and selected Mr. Jaffery.

Given Mr. Jaffery’s willingness to attack Stacey Nachtaler as insufficiently loyal to both the Croton Dems and Mondaire Jones, as well as his targeting of Jessica Dieckman for writing letters to The Gazette, it is commonly believed that Mr. Jaffery was selected because of his pliability—including a willingness to go along with the years-long effort to shut down the village court.

In a recent posting on the Croton Chronicle, Mr. Jaffery denies that he wants to close the court. Resident opposition has made it politically impractical to shutter the court directly. The solution devised by Mr. Jaffery is to win election on a platform of fixing what he claims is our “outdated, inaccessible court system” by spending a large amount of money and increasing the employee count. Once elected, Mr. Jaffery will go to the Board of Trustees and say that he needs a big increase in the Justice Court budget.

The trustees will tell us voters that property tax increases can be avoided if we do what they told us in 2022.

What cannot be done directly will be accomplished indirectly: before long taxpayers will be begging for relief and demand that the Village Court be eliminated. It is a clever solution, and I give Mr. Jaffery credit. But it was not necessary for him and his running mates (Ms. Slippen and Mr. Simon) to attack Mr.Watkins.

Mr. Jaffery objects to how Mr. Watkins runs the court. That is a legitimate stance for a challenger to take against an incumbent. But to say that Mr. Watkins is doing “what is convenient for him” rather than “our community-at-large” is a low blow. It is also factually incorrect.

Mr. Jaffery cites the fact that Spanish-speaking defendants are “funneled… onto specific days over which they have no control” as one example. This is not entirely true. In any court that I know of, you are given specific appearance dates. That applies to speakers of English, Spanish, or any other language. Within reason, most courts will accommodate party requests for a particular date. The court date initially is set based on the nature of the charge. For example, a judge will hear new civil matters on Monday at 10am, traffic matters on Monday at 11am, and criminal matters on Tuesdays at 9:30. As the case progresses, dates are assigned after consultation with the parties and witnesses. Even when you do show up for your appearance, there is normally a specific order in which cases are heard. For example, stipulated cases may be heard first, followed by the other cases with all parties present, followed by a“second call” for those who arrived late.

It is not unusual for a defendant to have limited options. I once got a speeding ticket in a small southern court. Since the officer who issued the ticket was a necessary witness, my case could only be heard on the officer’s “court day” (once or twice a month, depending on the officer) and even that was subject to last-minute emergencies.

I know of no court that does not assign defendants to appear on a specific date and time. That applies to all defendants regardless of ethnicity or language. To this extent, the experience of a defendant in our Croton court is no different from what they would experience in most other courts.

Mr. Jaffery does not tell us about any direct experiences with Croton Village Court, but instead he says that being a law clerk in Hudson County NJ “has shown me exactly what a functional, efficient, and compassionate justice system looks like.”

Hudson County has a population of about 750,000 people. Croton has a population of about 8500 people. If Mr. Jaffery thinks that he is going to get a Hudson County-size budget from Croton taxpayers, he is in for an awakening.

Even assuming that Hudson County NJ courts are the standard by which Croton’s court should be run, it does not mean that New Jersey is a defendant’s paradise. I knew a mother who had a domestic issue in the Hudson County court. She had a remarkably good command of conversational English, but needed an Urdu court interpreter. To a great extent, the appearance dates for her case were set based on the interpreter’s schedule. The judge did tell the mother that if there was an emergency, she could come into court on any day and the judge would get a LanguageLine interpreter.

The procedure used in Hudson County NJ may have changed, but at the time of this litigation it was the same as used here in Croton: cases requiring an in-person interpreter were set for particular dates, but LanguageLine could be used if a matter required an immediate translation.

LanguageLine is the oldest translation service, begun in the old days of AT&T. It remains the most widely used service in courts, law enforcement, and district attorney offices. It provides translators trained specifically for court proceedings. Mr. Jaffery objects because “a voice on a phone cannot sit next to someone and help them read and understand physical paperwork or legal forms.”

Mr. Jaffery conflates two separate things. A court translator (whether on phone or in person) gives a translation from English to the defendant’s preferred language. LanguageLine translators are not supposed to help someone “understand physical paperwork or legal forms.” That constraint also applies to an in-person translator. There are rare instances where cultural factors necessitate a degree of latitude for the translator, a common example being the translation of “Notary” to “Notario.”

It is true that the dynamics of an in-person translation interaction is different from a phone or video interaction. But for an in-person translator to help a defendant “understand” court proceedings or legal documents is improper: even if the translator is admitted to the bar, the translator is not acting as an attorney.

It may be that the volume of Spanish-speakers warrants hiring a full-time in-person translator. Neither Mr. Jaffery nor any member of the Board of Trustees has raised that matter prior to Justice Watkins being denied the Croton Dem line. 

A proponent of hiring a full-time court translator has two possible lines of reasoning. The first is a pragmatic metric-driven analysis of demand including volume and defendants’ expressed preference.

This is not the reasoning put forth by Mr. Jaffery.

Mr. Jaffery bases his argument on procedural due process and “fairness for all.” That enables him to make administrative decisions made by Justice Watkins into moral failings of Sam Watkins who is charged with doing “what is convenient for him” at the expense of minority defendants. But turning the Village Justice election into a morality play between the good guy upstart and the bad guy incumbent creates a significant problem.

By framing the matter as a strict scrutiny Fourteenth Amendment issue, Mr. Jaffery dramatically expands the scope of what the Village of Croton must do. Perhaps realizing the financial and practical implications of his reasoning, Mr. Jaffery limits his proposed remedy to Spanish-speakers.

I don’t see the Croton court policies as a violation of defendant rights. But I do appreciate the argument made by Mr. Jaffery. The difference between us is that I believe that the law (and that includes due process) applies to all. You cannot justify a distinction between a Spanish-speaking defendant and an Urdu-speaking defendant if the underlying right is Constitutional in nature (equal protection applies to “any person” within the court’s jurisdiction, so citizenship does not matter).

Croton is not unfamiliar with creative legal theories used as the basis for official action—Village Attorney Josh Subin holds a famously novel interpretation of the First Amendment. Now comes Mr. Jaffery telling us that a telephone translation service used for decades in courts and prosecutors offices across the nation is unconstitutional.

Unlike Mr. Subin, it seems that Mr. Jaffery does not actually believe what he is saying and therefore it is unlikely that Mr. Jaffery (if elected) will seek a budget increase based on due process concerns. Carving out an exception solely for Spanish will be framed as a pragmatic administrative matter (which makes sense) and LanguageLine will continue to be used for non-English speakers who don’t want to wait for an in-person translator.

Most of the recent attention has been focused on the hiring of a full-time interpreter. The proposal for a night court is likely to be much more costly to taxpayers. Night courts are often found in large cities with heavy daytime caseloads; NYC’s night court was a huge tourist attraction in the wake of the television show. The courts are commonly used for criminal matters because of speedy trial requirements.

Night courts are expensive and can be logistically difficult. That does not mean Croton should not consider the option, but we need to be realistic. The judge, prosecutor, court reporter, court staff, and entry screening staff need to be scheduled and paid. Of course, a live translator would also be there. Depending on staff schedules and collective bargaining agreement wage mandates, the night court payroll can be significantly higher per hour of operation.

To say that Sam Watkins is only “considering what is convenient for him” is belied by his decades here in  Croton. People have disagreed with him about MetroEnviro and Millenium (when he served as trustee), about the subdividing of the CCNS parcel on Highland (in his private capacity) and about the court consolidation. In all those decades, he has engaged in civil discourse without getting personal.

For four years, the people that run our village have wanted to dissolve the village court. Now in the space of a few days, they have reversed course. Now they propose an expansion including a full-time court translator (Spanish only), an entirely new Night Court, and unspecified “modernization” of the court. Manager Healy and Mayor Pugh said Croton couldn’t afford the court but all of a sudden Ms. Slippen and Mr. Simon are campaigning on a platform of costly changes to the structure of the court.

Perhaps the failure to take a principled stand is due to a lack of principles. Perhaps the strategy is to blow a hole in the next budget in order to force dissolution of the court. Perhaps Ms. Slippen and Mr. Simon believe that a man they have known for decades is a slipshod court administrator who tolerates discrimination and only considers what is convenient for him. I don’t know the answers, and I doubt we will find out until after Election Day.

The decision by the Croton Democratic Party leadership to kick Judge Watkins to the curb does mark a significant milestone in our village. The decision to have a judicial candidate take on the role of attack dog is one which I hope will not be repeated in future years.

--Paul Steinberg

Croton-on-Hudson