When Justice Costs Millions

By Michael S. Serrill

The "bandits in Westchester" and other budget busters

The defendants arrive at the Westchester County courthouse every day in a law-enforcement caravan that starts 18 miles away. Entrances to the courthouse are blocked by concrete barriers to ward off Beirut-style truck-bomb attacks. Participants and spectators are screened twice by metal detectors before entering the eighth-floor courtroom. Outside there are armed police everywhere, seen and unseen.

The extraordinary new precautions are for the trial of self-styled Revolutionaries Kathy Boudin and Samuel Brown, who are charged with murder and robbery in the 1981 Brink's armored-car holdup. And if the security is awesome, so is the price tag. Westchester County officials estimate that by the time the trial ends, perhaps in August, it will have cost $3.5 million above day-to-day court expenses.

The Brink's case is just one of several recent prosecutions that have rung up staggering costs. The present state trial and the one last year involving three other Brink's defendants together are likely to empty the public coffers of an extra $7 million to $10 million, rendering it the costliest state prosecution in the history of the U.S. The figure makes the two trials of California Mass Murderer Juan Corona ($4.6 million) and the "Hillside Stranglings" case of Angelo Buono ($1.6 million) seem like bargains. The Wayne Williams trial in Atlanta and the related police investigation into the slayings of 29 young blacks ran upwards of $2.5 million.

Notoriety alone is not the root of the matter. Many complicated criminal cases routinely cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reasons for the phenomenal bills vary from case to case. Brink's-style security is uncommon. More usual cost escalators include lengthy investigations, prolonged jury selection and the growing tendency of lawyers to use streams of well-paid expert witnesses and counterexperts. In trials of indigents, the public must pay for both sides. Some courtroom staff would be employed in any event, but long trials can make it necessary to bring in additional lawyers, clerks and judges. "The price of justice has become astronomical," says James Stewart, director of the National Institute of Justice. "It's like an arms race. I bring in a hired gun, so you bring in two hired guns."

The prospect of spending even $100,000, not unusual for a major full-dress murder trial, is enough to threaten some small towns and counties with penury. Under a turn-of-the-century New York law, for instance, Rockland County must foot the Brink's bill because the murders and robbery occurred there, even though changes of venue moved the first trial to Orange County and the second to Westchester. To pay for the first trial, Rockland last year had to double a new county sales tax. The huge expenses in the second have touched off a war of words between Rockland and Westchester officials. When Herbert Reisman, chairman of the Rockland County legislature, speaks of the "bandits in Westchester," he does not mean the defendants. The extensive security procedures are "outrageous and outlandish," Reisman says. "There is no way Westchester County would approve the requests made by their director of public safety if they had to pay the bill themselves."

New York Governor Mario Cuomo two weeks ago agreed to help by having the state contribute $1 million toward the Brink's trial. Shifting the cost of expensive cases to agencies better able to pay is one solution to the problem. Massachusetts has been picking up local court costs since 1978, which means that the high price of the current barroom gang-rape trial in Fall River will not make a dent in the Bristol County budget. Since 1961, California counties have been able to recover part of the cost of budget-busting homicide trials from the state.

Some court officials are less concerned about the price of trials and investigations than about the price of the endless appeals process. That cost is especially high in capital cases, and court observers say that in some areas a county's assessment of its ability to pay will often determine whether it seeks the death penalty in a murder case. The expense is "prohibitive, particularly in marginal cases," says John Carroll, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Cost concerns can also completely finish off a case. Last month an Arizona judge dismissed riot and assault charges against 19 members of a black religious sect after officials of sparsely populated Cochise County refused to continue paying for their legal defense. The 19 were charged after a 1982 melee with police. By the time six of the defendants were ready for trial in February, the county had doled out its entire $300,000 indigent defense fund, and officials decided they could not afford to pay any more.

Such an outcome is still an anomaly. Most experts believe that overall the costs of the criminal-court system are not increasing at a rate that is out of line with the rest of the economy. The majority of prosecutors and judges are still willing to commit whatever resources are necessary, even in blockbuster cases. The trial in which Texas Nurse Genene Jones was recently convicted of murdering a baby in a clinic where she worked cost Kerr County a big part of its annual court budget. But in nearby Bexar County, District Attorney Sam Millsap is gearing up to prosecute her again for injecting a second baby with a life-threatening drug. "Someone tried to kill a child, and justice demands that that person be tried," he says. Like many, he refuses to apply only an accountant's yardstick. "There's no way you can make justice cost effective. If we ever get to the point where we base a decision to prosecute on its price tag, then we will not have a criminal justice system." --By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by Barry Kalb/New York, with other bureaus

With reporting by Barry Kalb