NO LOCKS, AND A TRAILER IN BACK
Every Friday in the Long Island town of Southold, hundreds of criminal and civil litigants and defendants pour into the Town Hall meeting room, which doubles as its Justice Court. There, Justices Bill Price and Rudolph Bruer preside over every criminal and civil matter that starts in Southold, which they say presents a security threat that has judges and court personnel alike worried for their safety. No metal detectors protect the entrance to the court — a single court officer, armed with a handgun, is the only protection — and the double doors which allow access to the room from the parking lot often aren’t even locked. Meanwhile, the judges’ “chambers” are a small trailer attached to the back of Town Hall, with a door that won’t properly close. “We don't know who’s in the courtroom. Do they have a weapon, or don't they have a weapon? It is just not safe,” said Justice Price. “The under sheriff called me up to say [the sheriff's deputies] don’t like coming into our court because it's really dangerous.” Seeking redress, Price recently petitioned the Town Board to relocate the court, an action supported by Supervisor Scott Russell. “I ask this board to be committed to finding a separate complex for the court,” Russell said, as reported by The Suffolk Times. “In our workplace violence survey, every department in town government focused on Friday court sessions as the biggest concern.”

A LONG, STRANGE TRIP 
An Afghan warlord who a private security firm duped into making a trip to America to consort with diplomats about power consolidation in his homeland — and, officials had hoped, the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin — may stand trial on heroin charges, Southern District Judge Laura Taylor Swain has ruled. The New York Sun has the story. After Bashir Noorzai arrived on U.S. soil in 2005, the Drug Enforcement Administration had been permitted to pursue a case against Noorzai in connection to opium poppies that grow on his land. He was interrogated for 11 days in a Manhattan hotel and arrested. For the last three years he has been held in solitary confinement. Swain’s decision said that a foreign criminal suspect could be released only if both kidnapping and torture were used to bring him here. Noorzai's “allegations of deceit and government misconduct, which do not implicate physical abuse of any kind, are insufficient to provide any basis” for his release, Swain wrote.

NO SUPERVISION PUTS CITY ON HOOK
The Staten Island Advance reports that Southern District Judge Robert W. Sweet has put the city on the hook for up to $100 million for an alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve 2003 fight in a Staten Island firehouse. The fracas left firefighter Robert Walsh with facial and skull fractures after being hit with a chair. Walsh’s aggressor, Michael Silvestri, was sentenced to a year in jail in 2006 after pleading guilty to second-degree assault. Sweet found the city liable since former Capt. Terrernce Sweeney, who was in the firehouse at the time, did not intervene when the dispute grew heated, even after Silvestri threatened to hit Walsh with a chair. While the city argued that “no amount of supervision at the time of the incident could have prevented the spontaneous outbreak of violence which occurred,” Sweet ruled that “The record establishes that the lack of supervision at the firehouse led to violence, which could have been stopped by appropriate supervision.” Since 2000, Sweeney had broken up at least five fights at the firehouse.

"DRY APPROPRIATION" FOR PAY RAISE
And as anticipated, the $121.7 million budget passed yesterday by the State Legislature did not include a judicial pay raise. But as The New York Law Journal reports, the budget does include a so-called “dry appropriation” for $48 million for a judicial pay hike retroactive to Jan. 1, 2008, leaving open the possibility that lawmakers will address the controversial topic this year. “It keeps it alive for potential action in the future,” said Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein, chairwoman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. “It’s a recognition that we understand that there is a need to be addressed.” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver added that the threat of a lawsuit by Chief Judge Judith Kaye would not affect the chances of appropriating the money for a pay raise. “I do not believe there will be any impact on judicial raises as a result of that lawsuit,” he said.