J. CONOR CORCORAN, ESQ. REPORTING: There’s three branches of government, right? Each of ‘em has its own subdivisions, and the Courts have offices like the Sheriff, the Prothonotary (the clerk for civil cases), and the Clerk of Quarter Sessions (the clerk for criminal cases).

Most lawyers couldn’t tell you why this vital office is named as it is (in Ye Olden Times, the court clerks would congregate four times a year to kvetch about the price of tea in China), and I always thought it was nonetheless appropriate because they always seemed to work at 25% speed in there anyway, what with the perusal of the Daily News and its concomitant prohibition on things like actual public service. It was, nonetheless, the place where the court’s files on every criminal prosecution in the city were maintained.

It was also an office which was a major enforcement arm for the collection of bail. When a criminal defendant posts bail, the money is a guarantee that they’ll physically show up for court. When bail is set in any given case, the defendant simply posts 10% of the total amount, and if they don’t show, the city earns the right to collect on the remaining 90%. By virtue of an Inky investigation (again, people, Vive Le Broadsheets on Broad Street!), it was revealed that under Vivian Miller’s tenure, that 90% represented up to One Billion Dollars.

The Inquirer’s Karen Heller deftly summarized the history of the Clerk of Quarter Sessions in today’s paper, and how it came to pass that Vivian Miller resigned. Back in the early ’90s, she was elected on a wave of robust promises that proved as flaccid as 2 am aspirations on an Old City morning, and now with our current economic hangover, there’s hell to pay as that billion is an impressive figure that could go a long way.

While there can be no doubt that the assumption of the Quarter Sessions office into the normal operations of the Prothonotary will save the City quite a few dollars, there are two lessons to be learned from this story:

The first is that a glaring reality regarding that $1 billion has been ignored – it’s totally uncollectible. The vast majority of criminal defendants in this city are poor, and they won’t have the money to pay when the city comes knockin’. It’s that simple. When some schmoe from Kenzington or Cobbs Creek is given a $10,000 bail, they can barely find the 10% – let alone the full amount, let alone a larger bail. So, essentially, Vivian Miller is being crucified for not attempting to collect blood from a stone.

And while the decision to consolidate operations is nonetheless long overdue, it is a symptom of the entrenched inefficiency in our local and state governments, proving the second Philebrity maxim of the day, cats and kittens: The shit always rolls downhill.

Reporting live from as close to the top as I can get, I remain:

Litigiously Yours,

J. Conor Corcoran, Esquire

Conor Corcoran is Philebrity’s resident legal correspondent. Read more of his posts here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 3:39 pm.