SDNY COURTHOUSE, August 14 – While many even most cases in the Magistrates Court of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York are sealed or have case numbers given only later, on August 14 before Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman a man with a Violation of Supervised Release from 2008, based on a case from 2002, was brought in shackled.
His name is Cesar Turbides and Inner City Press finds in the file his 2017 request to SDNY Judge Paul G. Gardephe, to whom the case was reassigned, to terminate his probation which barred him from work programs in jail in Florida.
Judge Gardephe denied the application, and now has set a status conference for next week for the detained Turbides. Inner City Press, the only media in the Mag Court for this on August 14, will continue to follow this and other cases.
On August 12 Juan Effren Paulino was remanded for illegal re-entry to the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on August 10. Even hours after the remand Paulino's case remained "sealed" on PACER. But during the short proceeding, with Inner City Press the only media in the Mag Court, it was said Paulino was charged with narcotics in 2010 and deported, re-entered and was charged with another felony in 2017. He's set to appear before District Judge Denise Cote on August 13. So why is the case still sealed?
On August 5 a sex offender was processed and remanded by the name of Townsend, not listed on the day's New Presentment. Townsend went missing from the homeless shelter on Creston Avenue in the Bronx he was assigned to. His Federal Defender said the shelter moved him. But it seems he disappeared from the second location too. He was in on Violation(s) of Supervised Release including cocaine and PCP. He was remanded, with a next day before Judge Alvin Hellerstein on September 4 and not before, the fill-in AUSA said, due to medical issues. Judge Moses admonished the US Attorney's Office for leaving Townsend in the MCC over the weekend, and asked for a written submission of reasons. But will that be public? Under what case number? On the PACER terminal in the SDNY Press Room none of the defendants named Townsend have Judge Hellerstein as their judge. Unregistered sex offender, indeed. We'll have more on this.
A defendant named Edwin Gonzalez was presented as just in from Rikers Island, remanded on the consent of his CJA lawyer and in need of methodone. Later on August 1, also remanded but with a case number because indicted and extradited from Estonia which got consular notice was Nikolai Niftalijev, charged with narcotics inportation conspiracy.
Inner City Press will continue to try to find the missing cases on the Press Room PACER terminal. Watch this site.
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