The Criminal Court building in lower Manhattan is a stolid 17-story Art Deco structure built of granite in 1941. Located at 100 Centre Street, it stands among a cluster of other imposing court and government buildings between Chinatown and the Brooklyn Bridge. An overhead walkway connects the court building to a city jail called the Tombs. At 1 a.m., most nearby offices are dark and Centre Street is lifeless except for a few yellow cabs and the light from the Best Health Deli, a block north. But inside the Criminal Court building, the busiest criminal courthouse in America, the Lobster Shift is just beginning.
The Lobster Shift is the unofficial name for the 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. arraignment session run by Manhattan’s criminal court system Thursday through Saturday nights. (The more commonly known Night Court is, in fact, the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. arraignment shift.) Though its provenance is hazy, the term probably refers to the nocturnal hours when lobstermen traditionally set their traps. Policemen work lobster shifts; so do construction workers. Why judges and lawyers adopted the nomenclature of fishermen is a fact lost to history.
The Lobster Shift at 100 Centre Street is the only legal proceeding in the country where a judge regularly presides over an open courtroom at four o’clock in the morning. It is held in Room 130, a brightly lit, cavernous hall with tall soot-covered windows, hanging fluorescent lights, and beige floor tiles. Fifteen rows of pewlike oak gallery benches line the back two-thirds of the room. A modest judge’s bench dominates the front of the room, and an American flag hangs on a pole behind the judge’s chair. The attorneys’ podiums are portable wooden jobs, with multiple coats of varnish. Suspects sit to the judge’s right. Between the gallery and the suspects stands a large structure that houses two phone-booth-size enclosures where defense attorneys can talk privately with their clients. The box is known as the Confessional.
The official name for the Lobster Shift is AR-5—AR as in arraignment, 5 as in the fifth shift of the week. The Lobster allows the system to arraign a suspect being held by the police 24 hours a day. In the past, slow arraignments have drawn complaints from civil libertarians. The Lobster also serves a political function: The overnight session is intended to signal New York’s commitment to efficient justice.
The Lobster Shift began more than 30 years ago and was busiest in the early ’80s, at the height of the crack epidemic. At the time, the Lobster operated seven days a week, but in 1989, administrators cut back to the present three days a week, citing improved efficiency and rising costs, not a reduction in case volume. In 2000, the Lobster Shift handled roughly 12,000 cases, averaging about 75 arraignments per eight-hour session.
Young lawyers from the district attorney’s office handle almost all Lobster Shift cases. A newly hired ADA can expect at least one three-day rotation on the Lobster in his or her first two years. More experienced ADAs sometimes cover shifts as well.
The ADA is normally opposed by one of several Legal Aid Society attorneys who represent almost all of the defendants. One Legal Aid attorney works the Lobster on a regular basis and handles misdemeanor cases only. Two additional Legal Aid lawyers, selected about once a month from a pool of around 100, handle the felony cases and some misdemeanors. Legal Aid lawyers receive an extra $300 to $400 per shift (their base salaries range from about $37,500 to $75,000) and two days off for working the Lobster.
Lobster Shift cases originate exclusively in Manhattan, but court judges from all five New York City boroughs take turns presiding. Like prosecutors, judges work the Lobster three days in a row. A judge typically draws one shift every two years or so.
The Lobster Shift staff includes a court reporter, a prosecutor’s assistant, and an interpreter, usually Spanish (interpreters of languages from Mandarin to Wolof are kept on call). At any given time, about a dozen uniformed officers work the courtroom: New York Police Department officers control the suspects; Department of Correction officers chaperone the defendants; and bailiffs, or court officers, maintain courtroom decorum.
Like other arraignment sessions, AR-5 handles every type of case—from first-degree murder to public urination. Many defendants are young African-American and Hispanic men, typically unemployed, often with a history of mental illness and mostly accused of drug crimes. But the Lobster Shift sees the gamut of alleged perps—white middle-aged Wall Street types, dignified senior citizens, fresh-faced college preppies, you name it. If the system is ready for you in the middle of the night, you’ll be appearing in AR-5.
Despite the hour and the clientele, the Lobster Shift is generally uneventful. No guns have been fired in the courtroom in recent memory, nor has anyone been stabbed (the magnetometer, installed near the main entrance about 10 years ago, may play a preventive role). Still, incidents happen. In 1990, a parole violator facing a return to state prison jumped onto the Confessional during his arraignment, climbed through a window, and fled down Baxter Street. The NYPD apprehended him a block away. Another suspect tried to escape by diving across the defense table toward the gallery benches. His head ended up inside a defense attorney’s computer monitor.
The number of spectators in the gallery ranges from one or two to several dozen. Most are friends or family of defendants; others are defendants who have been released but are waiting for paperwork to be processed. Occasionally there are tourists. The Lobster Shift is apparently listed as an attraction in a German guidebook.
It is 12:45 on a recent Saturday morning, and Jennifer Steiner, a fourth-year ADA, is standing at the attorney’s podium in room 130. Steiner is 27. She has the look of a young Laura Dern, if Dern were given to a permanently purposeful expression and wore nicely tailored business suits.
Steiner grew up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995, and earned her JD from George Washington University in 1998. During the summer after her first year of law school, she worked for the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence. The ABA internship gave her practical experience with the issue that has since become her principal professional interest. “I don’t know exactly what drew me to domestic violence,” she says. “I was shocked that it’s so prevalent.”
The next year, Steiner applied to four district attorney’s offices in New York City. Her top choice was the Manhattan office, headed by 26-year veteran DA and local legend Robert Morgenthau. Four interviews and several months later, Morgenthau offered Steiner a position. She accepted on the spot.
“I like to hold people accountable for their actions,” she says. “It’s never a happy occasion to put someone in jail, but if you believe that’s where someone should be, that’s part of the job.”
A year and a half ago, Steiner began prosecuting felonies, and she has won six convictions in her six felony cases so far. She was recently appointed to the Sex Crimes Unit, the prestigious division that’s often a stepping stone to homicide prosecutions. When she is assigned to work on a trial, Steiner may work as many as 80 hours a week.
Steiner is a newlywed. Her husband, whom she married last August, is a lawyer, too. They met at George Washington, and he is a fourth-year associate at a large firm in New York. Steiner does not wish to reveal her husband’s name or any other details about him. Like many prosecutors, she chooses not to share information that might be used by defendants to seek retribution.
Steiner drew tonight’s Lobster Shift because the less-seasoned prosecutors are at a weeklong trial-advocacy program. To acclimate herself for the all-night proceedings, she stayed up as late as she could yesterday, but she didn’t make it past the 11 o’clock news. This morning, she woke up and fell back to sleep several times. She finally got out of bed at noon and fixed herself a submarine sandwich. Later, she bought a PlayStation game as a birthday present for her 10-year-old brother and took Maggie, her bulldog, for a walk. She had dinner at 6, arrived at the district attorney’s office at about 11, and entered the courtroom at around midnight.
Thirty-odd folders are piled next to Steiner’s podium—yellow folders for felonies, blue for misdemeanors. Attorneys call felonies yellowbacks and misdemeanors bluebacks. Steiner is reviewing each folder to assess the case. There are several yellowbacks in the group, but bluebacks far outnumber them. An ADA in the district attorney’s Early Case Assessment Bureau has attached a DA data sheet to every case. Each sheet lists the circumstances of the case, and many suggest a bail amount. With yellowbacks, Steiner is instructed to closely follow the bureau recommendations. With bluebacks, she has more latitude to dispose of the case as she sees fit.
The 1 a.m. starting time comes and goes, but Judge Efrain Alvarado is not yet on the bench. He is sitting in a spare office about 100 feet away from the courtroom, reading a technothriller novel and listening to music on a portable radio. Judge Alvarado is a short 49-year-old with curly black hair. He is waiting for defense attorneys to interview clients. When they have prepared roughly 30 cases, court officers will contact him, and he will take his seat and bring the court to order.
Judge Alvarado normally presides over felony drug cases in a Bronx courtroom from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This will be the third night of his three-night Lobster. Alvarado says that his body has adjusted to the schedule. The fight against circadian rhythms can be especially challenging for judges, who tend to be considerably older than the attorneys. One story tells of a judge who finished a Lobster Shift and within hours dropped dead of a heart attack.
At 1:15, police officers escort a handful of suspects from the concrete holding cells behind the courtroom to the benches next to the judge. An unshaven white man in his thirties hangs his head. He is dressed in a white button-down oxford shirt and dark chinos. Nearby is a black man wearing a maroon T-shirt. His face is covered with pink boils. Both men look exhausted.
A brunette with Coke-bottle glasses and a PTA smile walks past Steiner and through a door to the judge’s right. Mary Beth Anderson is 42 years old, a mother of three, and an 11-year veteran of Legal Aid. She and her colleagues choose clients sometimes at random, sometimes by professional specialty. Anderson, for example, makes a point to take cases involving the mentally ill. Right now, she is headed to the holding cells to interview other suspects.
There are relatively few cases in the system tonight, and Steiner finishes sorting through her pile quickly. Handling cases solo, in the middle of the night, can be unnerving, especially for a rookie. “I was freaked out,” Steiner says of her first time on the Lobster Shift. “I kept thinking, I’m the only prosecutor awake in the county.” Tonight, however, Steiner appears confident and in control.
The first case is called at 1:58 a.m. A man is arraigned for forging a prescription. Steiner asks the court for $10,000 bail; the Legal Aid attorney asks for the defendant to be released on his own recognizance, pending a future court date. Judge Alvarado imposes $3,500 bail. Steiner notes the bail amount along with the date of the man’s next court appearance, then hands the file to her assistant, who enters the information in the computer.
The case lasts five minutes.
The next case is called. An actor in his early thirties threatened a noisy upstairs neighbor with a claw hammer last night. The judge sets bail at $2,500. A court officer hands him a slip of paper and instructs him to wait in the audience for more paperwork.
He walks to the gallery and hugs a man and a woman who are waiting there for him.
Again, the case takes five minutes.
About a third of the cases arraigned are so-called quality-of-life crimes. This is the product of New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s eight-year campaign against low-level offenses such as panhandling in the subway. Giuliani argues that prosecuting small crimes helps prevent bigger ones.
On this night, several men are arraigned for jumping a turnstile, one for loitering. A man distributing delivery menus for a Chinese restaurant is held overnight on a charge of trespassing. Steiner chooses not to share her opinion of Giuliani’s campaign. She does say this: “We have prosecutorial discretion, and I value that.”
Hispanic man with a red swollen face and a tangle of black and gray hair stands before the judge. It is 2:18 a.m., and Steiner is working on her sixth case. Steiner tells the judge about a number of outstanding warrants for the man: He had failed to come to court to answer previous charges of disorderly conduct and possessing an open container of alcohol. The defendant stands with his arms at his side, looking at the floor.
Anderson explains that her client failed to show up because he is an alcoholic. “The system isn’t the answer for a man like this,” she says.
Eight minutes later, the judge tenders an offer: a guilty plea on two of the charges and five days in jail. The man nods his head in assent.
Many defendants’ appearances end with a slip of paper and a promise, either verbal or monetary, to return for a court date. Most misdemeanor cases and lesser violations are concluded at arraignment, either with a dismissal or a guilty plea, which may or may not include jail time at the city lockup on Rikers Island. A defendant charged with a felony normally will be held at Rikers at least until his next court appearance or until he’s posted bail.
Judge Alvarado takes a moment to speak directly to the Hispanic man. “I’m not putting you in jail to punish you,” he says. “I’m putting you in jail to give you a few meals and to think about where your life is going.”
The man looks blankly at the judge. Officers escort him back into the pens. He will wait there until the end of the shift before boarding a Department of Correction bus. On a Saturday morning, with no traffic, it will take about 45 minutes to drive to Rikers.
Court officers have their rituals, and the 4 a.m. coffee break is among the most regular. One officer collects orders from everyone in the courtroom and heads to the Best Health Deli. There are a few requests for orange juice and eggs—almost everyone orders coffee.
Steiner does not drink coffee. She drinks Coke but not in the courtroom. She considers it bad form. She keeps a small bottle of water under her lectern, in case her throat gets dry while she’s making an argument.
Steiner finds the hour between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. the most difficult. That’s when fatigue is most likely to cause mistakes, and mistakes can have serious consequences. A woman seeking a protection order against a violent boyfriend might not get it. A murderer or a sex offender might be released on bail and put back on the street. Steiner is well aware of the stakes, especially when it comes to yellowbacks.
“There’s a reason they make the cases different colors,” she says.
The cases continue, and the courtroom feels sleepy. At about 4:45, two dozen men and women in their twenties and thirties enter from the lobby and take seats in the gallery. They are alumni of an adult-ed program, on a self-guided tour of New York at night. Before visiting the Lobster Shift, they ventured to a subway control center and to the top of the Empire State Building. Next on their schedule is a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. They sit in the gallery for about 25 minutes. Their main impression: Virtually all of the defendants are minorities, while all of the attorneys are white.
“That shit was wack.” A young African-American man is standing in front of the bench, speaking to Judge Alvarado. He is discussing the dispensation of a prior case. “What was that?” the judge asks. The lawyers get quiet. The court officers and a few people in the gallery perk up.
“What was what?” the defendant asks—”Wack?”
“That’s not the word I was talking about,” Alvarado says.
The judge could hold the defendant in criminal contempt and sentence him to jail time.
It is 5:35 a.m. The defendant flashes a mischievous smile. The judge laughs. Then, and only then, everyone else laughs, too.
Judge Alvarado calls a one-hour recess at 6 a.m. Despite the hour, this scheduled adjournment is called the dinner break. People often retire to Happy’s Deli, just west of the courthouse. Unlike the Best Health Deli, Happy’s has three tables where a person can drink coffee and read the paper away from AR-5.
The judge takes the first 20 minutes of his break to relax. He returns to reading his novel in a spare room. Steiner grabs a Coke at a vending machine and returns to the courtroom to review the last of the evening’s cases. he Lobster Shift does not really end; it simply peters out. After the dinner break, one man pleads guilty to drinking in public, another to possession of cocaine. By the time Alvarado walks off the bench at 9 a.m., the Lobster Shift has dispensed with almost 30 more cases. Overall, however, everyone agrees it was a slow shift.
Judge Alvarado leaves the bench with a court officer by his side. In the spare room, he takes off his robe, slips his radio, his novel, and his other belongings into a backpack, and strolls into the hallway looking like any other civilian.
Back in the courtroom, a few regulars linger. Mary Beth Anderson is in the gallery talking to a defendant who has been released and appears confused. After a few minutes, he nods and walks off. Anderson leaves soon after.
Steiner packs up her belongings. A freshly showered young blond woman in a pantsuit walks up to Steiner’s podium. She is the daytime ADA, preparing to begin her arraignment shift.
Outside, Steiner stands in a puddle wearing yesterday’s clothes. She has plans to go with her husband to the Jersey Shore today. She does not know whether to try to catch a nap now or stay awake until the evening. She looks too tired to decide.
The Lobster went well, Steiner says. She is confident that she made the proper motions and gave the appropriate notices and asked for the right orders of protection. She kept the system moving. She did her job.
At this moment, doing one’s job seems to an outsider like a paltry trade-off for the simple pleasure of a good night’s rest. But if Steiner has any doubts—if she is wondering why she has just spent a Friday night with the drunks and drug dealers and wife beaters of Manhattan; if she is questioning the wisdom of prosecuting turnstile jumpers or loiterers; if she is thinking how much nicer it would have been to spend the night with her husband of 10 months; if she has any qualms at all about her chosen calling—she is not sharing them.
“As a prosecutor, you work weird hours, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else,” she says.
Centre Street is starting to come alive. Steiner cinches the belt on her trench coat and walks south.
