What We See So Far: Some Court Watching Trends in Dutchess County Courts

I knew very little about the process in court before I became a court watcher. In fact, I had never even heard the word “arraignment” before. When I walked into the City of Poughkeepsie courtroom for my first session, I was surprised to see the court reporter keep up with the quick back and forth for each case. It was like a whole new language I had to learn. 

After a couple of court watching sessions, I instinctively began to empathize with defendants who were also walking into court for the first time but for whom the stakes were a lot higher. I managed to take detailed notes about the proceedings while also jotting down personal observations. I scrawled down the emotions (or lack of them) in the courtroom, the stories behind the legal jargon, and the actions that impact each defendant’s fate. 

Because courts operate “in the name of the people,'' our goal is to report on court proceedings from a layperson’s point of view, without a law degree or history of working in a court. Following Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter’s dictum in Offut v. United States (1954), that “justice must satisfy the appearance of justice,” we ask ourselves, does what we’re seeing in the courtroom line up with our definition of justice?

To study any biases that might undermine the fairness and impartiality of our legal system, Court Watch of Dutchess County gathers qualitative and quantitative data on each case we observe. In addition to documenting concerns that come up in any individual case, we also use the data to observe trends that may be invisible in any one case or session. Below we present some background and initial trends that we have observed since the start of our data collection. 

Starting in September 2018, 14 court watchers have observed 1,337 total cases in three courts: City of Beacon and City of Poughkeepsie courts and Dutchess County Court. Our court watchers have seen six different judges in action.

Of those cases we observed in court, only 24.2% of defendants are women, even though women make up 51% of the City of Poughkeepsie population. And while 97% of defendants spoke and understood English, 3% did not. 

Additionally, we observed that Black or African American defendants made up 52.7% of all defendants, while only 30.6% were White, and 12.6% were Latinx. (We are recording the defendant’s perceived gender and race—what is being perceived by people present in the courtroom, including the judge and prosecutors.) 

Yet according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the City of Poughkeepsie population is composed of 37.6% Black people, 46.6% White people, and 17.1% Latinx people. Because these proportions do not align with the observed race of defendants, we must question possible causes behind, as well as consequences of, the overrepresentation of African Americans in our local courts. Is there an over-policing of the Black community in the City of Poughkeepsie? What happens to justice when White DAs and White judges continuously see a disproportionately higher number of African American defendants? 

To be clear, these data are based on the attendance of court watchers who often observe court on the same day each week. So, court watchers may have observed the same judge, public defender, and even the same defendants returning week after week. These results could be showing a pattern in the court scheduling that court watchers are not aware of. 

While court watching can’t explain the causes of these data, by making this information public we hope to inspire further discourse about our legal system. Over the course of court watching, we continue to analyze our data for additional trends and patterns that can inform our discussions going forward.