Law: When Justice Costs Millions

The "bandits in Westchester" and other budget busters

The defendants arrive at the Westchester County courthouse every day in a law-enforcement caravan that starts 18 miles away. Entrances to the courthouse are blocked by concrete barriers to ward off Beirut-style truck-bomb attacks. Participants and spectators are screened twice by metal detectors before entering the eighth-floor courtroom. Outside there are armed police everywhere, seen and unseen.

The extraordinary new precautions are for the trial of self-styled Revolutionaries Kathy Boudin and Samuel Brown, who are charged with murder and robbery in the 1981 Brink's armored-car holdup. And if the security is awesome, so is the price tag. Westchester County officials estimate that by the time the trial ends, perhaps in August, it will have cost $3.5 million above day-to-day court expenses.

The Brink's case is just one of several recent prosecutions that have rung up staggering costs. The present state trial and the one last year involving three other Brink's defendants together are likely to empty the public coffers of an extra $7 million to $10 million, rendering it the costliest state prosecution in the history of the U.S. The figure makes the two trials of California Mass Murderer Juan Corona ($4.6 million) and the "Hillside Stranglings" case of Angelo Buono ($1.6 million) seem like bargains. The Wayne Williams trial in Atlanta and the related police investigation into the slayings of 29 young blacks ran upwards of $2.5 million.

Notoriety alone is not the root of the matter. Many complicated criminal cases routinely cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reasons for the phenomenal bills vary from case to case. Brink's-style security is uncommon. More usual cost escalators include lengthy investigations, prolonged jury selection and the growing tendency of lawyers to use streams of well-paid expert witnesses and counterexperts. In trials of indigents, the public must pay for both sides. Some courtroom staff would be employed in any event, but long trials can make it necessary to bring in additional lawyers, clerks and judges. "The price of justice has become astronomical," says James Stewart, director of the National Institute of Justice. "It's like an arms race. I bring in a hired gun, so you bring in two hired guns."

The prospect of spending even $100,000, not unusual for a major full-dress murder trial, is enough to threaten some small towns and counties with penury. Under a turn-of-the-century New York law, for instance, Rockland County must foot the Brink's bill because the murders and robbery occurred there, even though changes of venue moved the first trial to Orange County and the second to Westchester. To pay for the first trial, Rockland last year had to double a new county sales tax. The huge expenses in the second have touched off a war of words between Rockland and Westchester officials. When Herbert Reisman, chairman of the Rockland County legislature, speaks of the "bandits in Westchester," he does not mean the defendants. The extensive security procedures are "outrageous and outlandish," Reisman says. "There is no way Westchester County would approve the requests made by their director of public safety if they had to pay the bill themselves."