This tag was created by Anonymous.
Cases in the Magistrates Court (115)
Eighty-one of those men and women were arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates court, having been arrested in the 28th Police Precinct below 130th Street. Thirty-two other men and women arrested north of that boundary were arraigned in the Washington Heights court. Two additional men were arraigned in the Night Court during the disorder (a third was held to appear in the Harlem court and was counted among those arraigned there).
Magistrates in the Harlem and Washington Heights courts adjudicated prosecutions of fifty of the 115 people (43%) arrested during the disorder. Most of those individuals (47 of 50) were not charged with the offense for which they had been arrested, but with disorderly conduct. The smallest proportion of those arrested for looting faced that lesser charge (12 of 50, 20%) compared with those arrested for breaking windows (11 of 20, 55%) and assault (8 of 13, 62%) - although given that the basis for the arrest of sixteen of those charged with disorderly conduct (32%) is unknown that pattern has to be be considered uncertain.
In the cases of the other sixty-five people they determined that the offense with which twenty were charged was a misdemeanor and sent them for trial in the Court of Special Sessions and determined that the offense with which the other forty-five were charged was a more serious felony and sent them to the Grand Jury for a hearing to decide if they should be tried in the Court of General Sessions. (In twenty-two of those cases, the grand jury saw the alleged offense differently, and voted misdemeanor charges that sent those individuals to the Court of Special Sessions not the Court of General Sessions). Magistrates made different decisions about different charges made against four defendants. In two cases, the men were sent to the grand jury on one charge and to the Court of Special Sessions on the other: Leroy Brown to the grand jury charged with riot and to the court charged with malicious mischief; and Raymond Easley to the grand jury charged with burglary and to the court charged with possession of a weapon. In the other two cases, the magistrate decided one case, convicting both Bernard Smith and Hashi Mohommed of disorderly conduct while sending Smith to the grand jury charged with riot and Mohammed to the Court of Special Sessions charged with possession of a weapon. (Arthur Killen, also recorded in the docket book as facing charges of both malicious mischief and possession of a weapon, was sent for trial in the Court of Special Sessions on both charges).
Magistrates found guilty thirty-nine of the fifty individuals whose cases they decided, just over half of the seventy-seven convicted. The offense of disorderly conduct of which they were convicted carried a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or two years of probation. That was half the maximum sentence for the misdemeanor offenses prosecuted in the superior courts, so sentences were generally shorter in the Magistrates Courts but as many of the longest terms were imposed there as in the Court of Special Sessions and Court of General Sessions.