LI jails suspend weekend lockup over coronavirus

Put weekend lockup on the list of obligations that the coronavirus has canceled for some Long Island residents.

The 20 people who were due to check in by Friday evening at Nassau County’s jail to serve their usual weekend-only jail stints can make other plans, according to records that Newsday obtained.

The same holds true for two weekend-only inmates who report to jail for the weekend in Suffolk County, a judge’s order showed.

Nassau Supervising Judge Teresa Corrigan said in an email Thursday to the county’s Criminal Courts Bar Association that she had created a list of people that the county’s East Meadow jail should not accept when they arrive to serve their weekend sentences.

“The Correctional Center has an infected inmate and is awaiting results on several additional tests,” Corrigan’s email also said. “Allowing an individual entry for a weekend puts their life and the lives of their family members in danger.”

The creation of the do-not-jail list followed an order that Nassau Administrative Judge Norman St. George issued earlier this week that “until further notice” banned the so-called “intermittent jail sentences.”

It was part of the rules he set forth for new operational protocol in the county’s overall court system during the public health emergency. The order postponed “all nonessential matters” until at least mid-April because of “the exceptional circumstances of the coronavirus medical crisis."

Defense attorney Gregory Grizopoulos, a member of CCBA’s executive board, reacted to the Nassau lockup suspension order by saying the organization appreciated “that the court quickly recognized and addressed the health and safety of not just our clients but also the brave men and women who work at the jail.”

He added: “Defendants reporting to the jail for two days every week is not consistent with meaningful social distancing and public safety.”

Corrigan’s email to CCBA also said that in these “trying times” she anticipated “that the health emergency currently gripping our nation and our county in particular, will supersede any statutory requirement for the defendant to make a request related to a change in his/her sentence.”

In Suffolk, Administrative Judge C. Randall Hinrichs said Friday *two defendants’ weekend jail sentences were “suspended immediately” because of “the current medical crisis.” It added that the judges involved in the cases would “address the matter further at the appropriate time.”

Mineola defense attorney Donald Rollock said Friday that one of his clients was among those told not to report to Nassau’s jail for his usual weekend lockup.

He said the client was a misdemeanor DWI offender who already had served several weekends in jail after being sentenced to 40 weekends in September — a sentence that allowed him to keep his job.

Rollock said court officials contacted him earlier this week about the problem and the judge on the case said his client would remain on probation until the matter was re-addressed in May.

Rollock said he believed the lockup suspension order would set up challenges to the sentences of the weekend-only inmates, saying they shouldn’t be penalized “because the jail can’t fulfill the promised sentence.”

Grizopoulos said his organization would encourage any attorneys representing defendants “unfairly impacted” in Nassau to address their concerns in court “when this crisis is over.”