By: Pat Fitzpatrick
“The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.”
-Lorenzo Anello (Robert De Niro), A Bronx Tale
On November 17, 2008 as part of the weekly class meeting of the Feerick Center for Social Justice Clinic, we were lucky enough to have an extraordinary guest speaker, Judge Michael Corriero. Judge Corriero is a well known juvenile justice expert and served as a New York State Supreme Court Justice for 28 years. From his vantage point as a presiding judge, Judge Corriero gained a unique perspective on how legislative changes can both worsen and improve juvenile justice systems and spoke to us about the moral and ethical struggles he faced as a leader in New York’s juvenile system.
A little history:
In 1978, the headline-grabbing violent crimes of 15 year old Willie Bosket, combined with a heated New York Gubernatorial race—where Hugh Carey was jockeying to show that he was tough on crime—led to the change in New York state law that juveniles (as young as 13) would be tried in adult court and face the same penalties as adult offenders. This replaced the family court system (a five year maximum sentence for offenders 16 and under) by imposing automatic transfer to the adult court and eliminating the threshold age. This system also entailed mandatory sentences and life-long felony convictions. Judges did have the power to grant youthful offender discretion, nonetheless, many believed that the system was flawed. Critics believed the mandatory element provided excessively harsh results and that it was a major contributing factor to the high rate of recidivism of offenders thus causing vicious cycles in poor communities. Recognizing these failings, in 1992, Judge Corriero spearheaded the establishment (and presided over) the Manhattan Criminal Court’s Youth Part, a court within the adult system that adjudicates cases involving 13, 14, and 15 year old children charged as adults.
To illustrate his experiences to the class, Judge Corriero used some effective examples from some of his favorite films and television programs. One example was from the film “A Bronx Tale.” Judge Corriero described the scene where Calogero or “C” (played by Lilo Brancato who ironically is expecting to go on trial this week for the murder of a police officer) is walking down the street and a car full of his friends pulls up and tells him to get in. When C gets in the car he finds a box of Molotov cocktails at his feet and learns that his friend in the front seat has a gun. He realizes that they are now on their way to the adjacent African American neighborhood to cause havoc. This puts C in a very difficult predicament. He does not want to be a part of the attack because he thinks it is wrong, and even more so because he has started a relationship with a girl from that neighborhood. Nevertheless, once he gets in the car he cannot ask his friends to pull over and let him out. These are his peers, his friends, his life.
The Judge posed the question to the class “Who are you when you are fourteen?” His answer, “You are what your friends think you are.” If C says anything or asks to get out, he would lose all respect from his friends and would be an outcast in his neighborhood. Luckily for C, Sonny (a neighborhood mobster who takes a paternal interest in C played by Chazz Palminteri) cuts them off and pulls C from the car. His friends forge on without him to catastrophic results. They succeed in bombing their target, but before they can make their getaway, a victim of their attack throws one of their own Molotov cocktails back at their car and they perish in the attack.
Judge Corriero said that he saw many of the juvenile offenders in the Youth Part as versions of C and that the proceedings were an opportunity to pull a young person from the car before they are permanently on a destructive path; before they serve a mandatory sentence; before they are permanently attached with the stigma that comes with the label of convicted felon.
He said that Prosecution did not see many C’s and that the defense attorneys thought that every kid was a C, and it was his job to decide who the kids were that should be “pulled from the car;” kids who made a bad decision based on peer pressure, who would have never committed the crime if they were on their own. For 16 years Judge Corriero made these decisions on a daily basis and he never stopped struggling with the moral implications his rulings had on these young people, their families and the communities they lived in.
Although he did not say so specifically, I am guessing that the Judge identified with the character of C. Later we learned from our professor that the Judge grew up in a rough and tumble neighborhood in Little Italy and lived across the street from the Manhattan Detention Center—the legendary “Tombs.” He was quoted in a recent Daily News Article saying “I was fortunate that the repercussions from any careless decisions I would have made – and I have not admitted to making any – I have been able to survive and overcome.”
Judge Corriero left us with this: “There is nothing wrong with being tough on crime, but we need to be smart about it especially when it comes to young people.” In early 2008, Judge Corriero left the bench and in June 2008 became Executive Director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York.
