It was an ordinary Friday night in a criminal court in Brooklyn. Until it wasn’t.
Around 11:30 p.m., a 33-year-old woman waiting to appear before a judge on low-level charges suddenly slouched on the bench where she was seated. The woman, Samantha Randazzo, was nine months pregnant and her water broke. Her baby was coming.
“We saw it,” her lawyer, Wynton Sharpe, said. “She didn’t have to say anything. We were like, oh OK, this is happening, like, now.”
Court officers sprang into action. Some rushed over to help Ms. Randazzo while their colleagues and the judge cleared the courtroom, Mr. Sharpe said. Suddenly, the courtroom had transformed into a labor and delivery unit.
Minutes before midnight, the baby arrived. Ms. Randazzo delivered a “bouncing baby boy,” Mr. Sharpe said. He did not know if the newborn had been named.
“It was a joyful and sad situation, given the circumstances,” he said.
Babies in New York City have been known to arrive with no apparent regard for the circumstances. One baby girl, Zenovia Remy Legette, made her entrance on a discarded piece of furniture outside her mother’s apartment building in the Bronx, thwarting an attempt to reach the hospital. Last year, another baby girl nicknamed “Baby W” arrived on a moving subway train in Manhattan, leading the police to her mother, who had been reported missing in Florida.
But no one The Times spoke to on Saturday could remember a case of a child being born in a city courtroom.
Justine Luongo, the chief attorney of the Legal Aid Society’s criminal defense practice, said officials needed to explain why Ms. Randazzo was not given an alternative to arrest, why she was initially discharged from the hospital and why her case was not dismissed right away.
“This is a horrific example of many, many system failures,” she said, adding that Ms. Randazzo was the kind of person for whom “we should be thinking about services and treatment, and not incarceration and arrest.”
Ms. Randazzo was arrested on Thursday for drug possession and trespassing. The police said she was on the roof of her building in the Nostrand Houses, a public-housing complex in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood in Brooklyn, without authorization. When the arresting officers searched her, they found a small amount of heroin and cocaine, officials said.
A law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss the case without authorization said that Ms. Randazzo was ineligible for a desk-appearance ticket because she had an open arrest warrant. The ticket would have allowed her to be released from the police station and come to court at a later date.
After Ms. Randazzo’s arrest, police officers took her to a hospital. She was discharged roughly 30 hours later. Then, officers took her to the criminal court in Brooklyn to be arraigned, or formally charged.
Mr. Sharpe said that doctors had not realized that Ms. Randazzo was so close to giving birth before she was released from the hospital. He praised the quick actions of the court officers, particularly Robert Winckler, who delivered the newborn and told Mr. Sharpe that he had been there for the birth of his own children. “It was clear,” Mr. Sharpe said.
Al Baker, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said the officers’ actions “personified the everyday virtues of their sworn service.” He added, “We are delighted both mother and baby are well.”
The Fire Department said it received a call at 11:58 p.m. reporting that a “civilian gave birth” at the criminal court in Brooklyn. An ambulance picked up Ms. Randazzo and her son about 10 minutes later and took them to the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
Ms. Randazzo’s arraignment went forward without her. Mr. Sharpe said he expected her case to be dismissed.
Ashley Southall writes about cannabis legalization in New York.
The post Woman Gives Birth in Brooklyn Courtroom appeared first on New York Times.
