SDNY COURTHOUSE, August 7 – 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 7 before Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses and on a presentment referred upstairs to District Judge John G. Koeltl, things got murkier still.
In the Mag Court, in public, Gregory Hermanwho said a courthouse would be demolished so as to avoid testing positive was released to remain in the St. Nicholas Avenue apartment of his son without the ordered location monitoring due to the late hour. Then an Assistant US Attorney came in to get apparently secret or sealed documents signed off on, four hours after Inner City Press was ordered by Judge John Koeltl to leave a presentment of a defendant arrested only the night before. So that presentment was shifted out of the Mag Court to keep it secret, while the other was left in plain view. Inner City Press reported on both of them. But something is wrong here.
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 Inner City Press has worked perched over since April, none of the defendants named Townsend have Judge Hellerstein as their judge. Unregistered sex offender, indeed. We'll have more on this.
at least one case had no number at all. 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. He's set to resurface on August 6 before SDNY Judge Oetken. Inner City Press aims to be there.
Remands were to the Metropolitan Correctional Center - where as Inner City Press has exclusively exclusively reported fellow non-reporting sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is hogging the legal meeting room with paid lawyers working in shifts so he can be out of his cell, using the Internet.
Inner City Press will continue to try to find the missing cases on the Press Room PACER terminal it has worked perched over for months. Watch this site.
