By Cara Bayles | April 5, 2020, 8:02 PM EDT
Nikhil Ramnaney felt Los Angeles courthouses hadn’t done enough to protect attorneys and their clients from the spread of the coronavirus. So the self-professed “bleeding-heart” assistant public defender did something unusual — he called up a prosecutor to commiserate.
Ramnaney, who serves as the L.A. public defender union’s president, found a receptive audience in a lawyer who would normally be an adversary — Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys.
“We agreed that if we teamed up, it couldn’t be chalked up to one labor union complaining,” Ramnaney said. “It would make a much more powerful statement to the bench but also to the public about the severity of conditions.”
Presiding Judge Kevin Brazile didn’t cede to their request for a courthouse shutdown, but Ramnaney said he’s seen “slow improvements” in some of L.A.’s 38 court facilities since he and Hanisee complained about conditions that they said put everyone at risk.
They said courthouse elevators were full. Defendants kept in overcrowded jails were transported to even more packed holding cells — sometimes only to be told their cases had been delayed. There were rumors that the criminal calendar would be jammed into fewer dockets. In courtroom galleries, and even the line to get into court buildings, people weren’t keeping six feet apart, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend.
“We were all hearing about the orders from the governor and the CDC and observing these precautions being completely ignored in the courts,” Hanisee said. “And courts are already a petri dish.”
So she welcomed Ramnaney’s call.
“We’re in the same boat on this,” she said.
Such unlikely detentes have been forged all over the country, as COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, continues to spread.
Last week, the district attorney and public defender in Nashville, Tennessee, agreed to seek early release for about 80 prisoners. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, more than 500 inmates were released, thanks to a collaborative effort that included both public defenders and prosecutors.
An estimated 1,000 New Jersey county jail inmates were approved for release after a mediation between local prosecutors, public defenders, the state attorney general’s office, and the American Civil Liberties Union. In Alameda County, California, home to the city of Oakland, prosecutors and defense attorneys have collaborated to get early release nearly 250 at-risk inmates from the Santa Rita Jail.
It’s rare for public defenders and district attorneys to agree on policy. But Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg expects to see more of these alliances.
“It’s going to catch on. We’re going to see it everywhere,” he told Law360. “This will be not only common, it will probably become the norm around the country for a while.”