July 13–20, 2000

city beat

The Orphaned Gun Fix

No Help Here: State Rep Evans, who co-chairs the Firearms Safety caucus, prefers his one-gun-a-month proposal to gun courts. photo: Shoshanna Wiesner

by Noel Weyrich

When State Rep. Connie Williams introduced a bill last year that proposed a special firearms court for trying Philadelphia’s gun offenders, she hoped the measure stood for something everyone can agree on: faster and more efficient gun prosecutions.

"This is a way of enforcing the laws," says Williams, a Democrat from suburban Haverford. "You know, we need to find some common ground for gun control in this state. We are such a split state on this issue."

It wasn’t long before Williams found, however, that in Pennsylvania’s polarized debate over guns, finding common ground can put you in no-man’s land — and leave your legislation in limbo.

Since its introduction on May 6, 1999, HB 1459 has languished in the House Judiciary Committee, without public hearings, largely ignored and unnoticed throughout a year in which gun control was often in the headlines. Her fellow Democrats were more interested in "supply-side" gun fixes like trigger locks and limits on gun purchases. The mostly rural and suburban Republicans were not apt to worry about what seemed like a Philadelphia problem. Most judges dislike the idea, Williams concedes, as does District Attorney Lynne Abraham.

"There’s a tension between the legislature and the courts, which is probably natural," says Williams. Referring to both the courts and the district attorney, she adds, "I’m not so sure they appreciate us interfering with what they’re doing."

Gun court, as it’s known, is built around the simple idea of removing gun cases from the crushing criminal caseload of Common Pleas Court, where impatient judges frequently give defendants mild or probationary sentences in exchange for a waiver of their right to a lengthy jury trial. Channeling the cases to a gun court, Williams argues, "will ensure that gun crimes are not ignored or reclassified at the demand of a public defender who threatens the judge with a jury trial."

The nation’s first gun court was opened in 1994 in Providence, RI. In four years, case disposition times — the period between arrest and conviction — fell from 518 days to just 126. More than 80 percent of all defendants received criminal sentences, compared to about 70 percent prior to 1994.

Similar courts have since sprung up in Seattle, Minneapolis and Detroit. New York has a gun court in the planning stages.

Although Williams is not from Philadelphia, she is one of 16 members of the legislature’s Firearm Safety caucus, which is co-chaired by one of the city’s most powerful state representatives, former mayoral candidate Dwight Evans. The caucus keeps an eye on no fewer than 52 separate pieces of gun legislation now pending in the House, along with three dozen more in the Senate. But in his public comments on gun control, although he’s from Philadelphia, Evans emphasizes his one-gun-a-month proposal and almost never mentions gun court.

"Obviously when you establish an agenda, as we have, with the one-gun-a-month, trigger locks, things of that nature, it is a part of an overall agenda," says Evans. "We’re not opposed to focusing on concentrating these gun cases in one particular court, but it’s part of an overall strategy.

"We need to do whatever we need to do to reduce the level of gun violence," Evans adds, somewhat defensively. "I’m willing to use every method — from lawsuits [against gun manufacturers], to one-gun-a-month, to trigger locks, to gun court — to continue to reduce the level of gun violence. There’s still too many guns out here on the streets."

Many of these proposals, he says, might get more traction next year if, after the November elections, Democrats manage to take over the State House.

Should it ever succeed here, gun court would join a growing list of specialty courts in Philadelphia, usually backed by one constituency or another, to streamline a portion of a judiciary that often seems hopelessly dysfunctional. The new Community Court, for instance, specially designed to handle Center City quality-of-life misdemeanors, is slated to open later this year.

"We already have a drug court [and] a commerce program," complains Alex Bonavitacola, president judge of the court of Common Pleas. "I just hate to keep carving up the court into little pieces. It really hurts our ability to be flexible and move judges around. They create logistical problems, staffing problems and scheduling problems."

Bonavitacola, who says he had not heard of the gun court proposal until this week, claims that the legislature has contradicted itself on the gun issue in recent years by loosening the restrictions on permits to carry handguns, while increasing the mandatory penalties for using a gun to carry out a crime. "They’ve never bitten the bullet and tried to do anything about restricting the sale of handguns," he says. "They’re attacking the problem from the bottom end rather than the top end. It just seems not very well thought out."

The gun court bill introduced by Williams would put all cases involving guns directly in the new court, avoiding the preliminary hearing step, where municipal court judges often give defendants reduced charges as a reward for declining a trial by jury. Critics of the court, including the District Attorney’s Office, say the charges are often reduced specifically to allow defendants to avoid the state’s harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Yet, through spokeswoman Cathie Abookire, Abraham has said she opposes the concept of gun court on principle. "It’s the judge’s job to give the appropriate sentence for the crime," said Abookire at the time of the bill’s introduction. "They can do that now."

Vincent Angelucci, a legislative aide to Williams, says that Abraham’s office seems more focused on getting rid of preliminary hearings altogether, and not just on gun cases. Many judges also favor streamlining the overall criminal justice system, "so I don’t know if they’re so much interested in going with another so-called boutique court." But other judges, he adds, have been supportive, most notably Judge Seamus McCaffery.

Late this spring, as the legislative session was coming to a close, Williams attached the gun court bill as an amendment to another piece of legislation that the House judiciary committee really wanted to pass.

"It’s a way to keep people alert that this is an important issue," she explains.

Members of the committee implored her to rescind the amendment. "Why don’t you wait?" she recalls them saying. "We’re going to see some special courts in New York City and we’re interested in this. Why don’t you wait and see what happens?" She acquiesced, and sent Angelucci on the trip to New York with the Judiciary committee in late June.

"They looked at community court and a drug treatment court," says Angelucci, with some disappointment in his voice. "We didn’t look at gun court at all."