For the completion of this assignment I went to the Buffalo, New York City Court located on court street in downtown Buffalo. I spent the entire day there and viewed 3 different sections of the court process for this assignment.
The Buffalo City Court system seems to be like an assembly line for the court system. They have the process broken up into 14 different parts and they handle different types of cases and different parts of the process. The sections that I visited were Part 1 (Arrest), Part 5 (Domestic Violence), and Part 13 (Civil Matters).
The Judges that presided over these 3 parts were Judge Hannah, Judge Harris and Judge Carney respectively. All 3 of the judges seemed to have a different approach in how they handled their respective court. At times the court atmosphere seemed to be too relaxed and other times over bearing. Judge Hannah and Judge Harris seemed to hold the line more in running their court room, where Judge Carney seemed to be more relaxed and personal with the lawyers and cases before him.
In Part 1 (arrest) of the court system, I witnessed the initial appearance of the defendants in the court room. This was where they set the court date, decided bail for the individuals that were in custody and determined the need for court appointed lawyers. In this section I witnessed 12 cases that came before the judge. The cases that appeared here were robbery, driving an unregistered vehicle, unlicensed operator of a vehicle, larceny, domestic violence, and trespassing.
In Part 5 (domestic violence) of the court system, I witnessed 15 cases that were brought before the court, however out of these 15 cases 6 defendants didn't even appear and arrest warrants were issued. The rest of the cases dealt with domestic violence between spouses and significant others. Some of these cases included other charges of larceny, harassment and disobeying restraining orders.
In Part 13 (Civil Matters) of the court system I witnessed 8...