Clivie Smith, 16, was hanging out on a Bronx street corner in 2007 when three men started harassing him. The youth ran into a nearby bodega, where a clerk handed him a loaded .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Smith came out shooting, cops say, striking one of his assailants and an innocent bystander. He then fired at narcotics officers responding to the scene.
The teenager never went to prison. He didn’t even go to trial. Not because the city couldn’t have tried to prosecute him on at least criminal possession of a weapon — but because the district attorney’s office took too long to bring a case.
Clivie Smith is one of the lucky criminals who got off because of a “30.30 motion” — referring to the section of the state criminal procedure law that mandates prosecutors be ready to try a case within six months for felonies and 90 days for high-level misdemeanors.
But he’s far from the only one. Brooklyn and Manhattan prosecutors gave 14,000 alleged criminals “Get Out of Jail Free” cards last year because they failed to meet deadliness. At the Manhattan DA’s office, the rate of 30.30 dismissals has increased a staggering 36% over the past four years.
The results are sometimes tragic. This year, Clivie Smith was the alleged ringleader of a group that shot innocent Bronx girl Vada Vasquez, 14, who was caught in the crossfire of a gang war.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office shrugged off the problem, saying most 30.30s are because of reluctant witnesses. The crimes dismissed, they say, are mostly low-level.
“It is more difficult to obtain and maintain the cooperation and interest of witnesses,” said Alicia Maxey Greene, spokeswoman for Robert Morgenthau’s office.
But legal experts say that it’s overwhelmed and inexperienced assistant district attorneys that allow drug dealers, rapists and murderers to walk the streets.
“Criminal court is a highly dysfunctional court across the board. It’s a high-volume conveyor belt,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Often an assistant district attorney will bungle the case.”
Savvy defense attorneys count the days, and when the time is up, judges have little option but to let accused drug dealers, subway flashers and cop beaters get an automatic pass.
After the case is done, the official records are sealed and no background check will turn up the crime, leaving law enforcement and victims fuming.
In 2006, for instance, school bus matron Connie Clark was accused of child endangerment for harassing an autistic boy. At one point, Clark was caught on tape yelling at P.J. Rossie, 8, to “shut up, you little dog.”
Prosecutors botched the case by mailing paperwork to the wrong address, despite being told that the defense attorneys had moved to a different office. Clark’s case was dismissed last week after the Brooklyn DA’s office failed to make their case in 90 days — and now Clark walks away with a clean record.
“All they had to do was file paperwork, and they didn’t do it. From top-to-bottom, the system has let my little boy down,” said Paul Rossi, the boy’s father.
“That was a snafu,” admits Jerry Schmetterer, spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney.
But the majority of the cases that get dismissed under the speedy-trial rule, Schmetterer says, are domestic violence or third-degree assault cases. And that’s because spousal abuse victims are often reluctant to testify against their partners.
Schmetterer said that they let the clock run out on these cases hoping the battered wife or husband will have a change of heart and testify in the case.
“It also keeps the victim under protective order for the duration of the case,” he said. “We see it as part of our crime-fighting strategy.”
But this doesn’t explain why the rate of third-degree assaults has remained stable in Brooklyn in the last two years, but “speedy-trial” dismissals in Kings County have shot up 12 percent.
O’Donnell said 30.30s are on the rise because the most inexperienced members of the District Attorney’s office are put in charge of criminal cases, while senior prosecutors handle more white-collar crimes and other high-level transgressions.
“A lot of these cases deserve a lot more time, but you have a lot of paperwork and you have a lot of inexperienced people handling most of these cases,” said O’Donnell, who was cop in the NYPD, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney and a defense attorney. “That’s really not a good end for any case. It’s not something you want to tell the public.”
O’Donnell believes that Brooklyn and Manhattan should be given the money to dedicate at least a few experienced attorneys with keeping track of the case calendar, and prevent people like Connie Clark and Clivie Smith from slipping through the cracks.
“There no sudden death overtime,” he added. “When it’s over, it’s over.”