Pretrial stay-away orders meant to shield people from abusive partners have long been misused. Thursday’s ruling is already helping people return home.
Shamika Crawford was left homeless for three months by a judge’s order. Now a court ruling establishing what may soon be known as a “Crawford hearing” could stop that from happening to other people.
Ms. Crawford, 35, of the Bronx, was arrested in 2019 based on a vaguely-worded misdemeanor assault complaint filed by her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Judges issued a pretrial stay-away order barring her from her home and refused her lawyers’ requests for a hearing, deferring to prosecutors who had cited an “extensive history” of over a dozen domestic-violence reports without mentioning that they had been against Ms. Crawford’s boyfriend, not against her.
The case eventually unraveled, but before it did, Ms. Crawford spent 88 days sleeping in her car and crashing on a friend’s couch, effectively separated from her two young children.
A ruling issued by a state appellate court on Thursday aims to prevent that from happening to others. The unanimous decision found that Ms. Crawford should have been given a due process hearing where a prosecutor was required to demonstrate the need for the stay-away order.
The ruling holds that before a judge issues a temporary protection order that deprives a defendant of something significant like access to their home or children, the judge should conduct a “prompt evidentiary hearing.”
Defense lawyers say cases like Ms. Crawford’s crop up every day in New York City courts: Prosecutors almost always ask for protection orders in domestic-violence cases and judges almost always grant them. The criminal cases eventually get dismissed most of the time, but the temporary orders upend lives, tear apart families and cause people to lose jobs.
“It’s punishing somebody before they get convicted of anything, in a huge way,” said Ms. Crawford’s lawyer, Eli Northrup, of the Bronx Defenders.
Within hours after the decision was issued, lawyers who represent others in similar situations had already begun requesting what Ms. Crawford’s lawyers are calling a “Crawford hearing.”
“I’m super excited about the decision,” Ms. Crawford said by phone. “Even though my case is over, I know this will help so many other people.”
A pretrial protection order is a well-intentioned precaution meant to shield someone from an abusive partner. But for decades, defense lawyers, legal experts and lawmakers say, they have been issued with such abandon in city courts, with such disastrous consequences for people with low incomes and few resources, that they have become sentences unto themselves — ones that are disproportionately meted out to Black and Latino defendants.
“Obviously, in many cases, temporary orders of protection are necessary,” Mr. Northrup said. “But in cases like Ms. Crawford’s — criminalized survivors, or families separated against their will — there will be an avenue to seek relief.”
The head of the law-reform unit at the Legal Aid Society, Corey Stoughton, said Friday that she had already heard of three cases where the decision was used as a basis for getting orders of protection lifted or modified to ease restrictions on the defendant.
“I got all these emails back from lawyers who said, ‘Oh I used it, it’s great!’” she said. “Three people went in, brandished the decision in front of the judge and ended up doing something that addressed the burden of the order of protection on one of their clients.”
One of them, Jennvine Wong, said she requested such a hearing Thursday for a client who has been in a legal limbo awaiting a trial since 2018. The entire time, a temporary protection order has interfered with the woman’s ability to co-parent her child, Ms. Wong said. The judge scheduled the hearing for next month, she said.
Though Ms. Crawford’s criminal case is long over, her difficulties with her former boyfriend, Kevin Mayers, remain. A judge issued a protection order against him in April, but the police have been unable to find him to serve him, her lawyers say. Mr. Mayers did not respond to an email message seeking comment on the case.
Three weeks ago, Ms. Crawford said, Mr. Mayers approached her in a bodega and threatened to punch her in the face.
She called the police on him and he disappeared again.
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