Woman Gives Birth In Courtroom — Her Arraignment Goes Ahead Without Her

Closeup on the face of a crying baby, being born in a Brooklyn courtroom surrounded by court officers while his mom may or may not be handcuffed. Hit the record scratch and cue the voiceover, “Yep, that’s me… you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.” Start spinning Baba O’Riley.

A 33-year-old woman named Samantha Randazzo gave birth on a bench inside a Brooklyn arraignment courtroom Friday night, surrounded by a real-life version of the Night Court cast. The five major New York City public defender offices — Legal Aid, Brooklyn Defender Services, New York County Defender Services, The Bronx Defenders, and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem — issued a joint statement Saturday calling it “not simply a failure of protocol or preparedness” but a “profound moral failure.”

What happened to Randazzo was, it seems, not quite as horrific as the public defender statement suggests. But don’t let the discrepancies throw you — this was still awful.

While the joint statement says Randazzo gave birth “in shackles” while “handcuffed to a bench,” her attorney, Wynton Sharpe, told the New York Times that court officers reacted quickly, rushing over to help once it was clear Randazzo was about to give birth and the judge cleared the room. A court spokesperson said Randazzo’s restraints were removed promptly after everyone realized what was going on. As they say, in the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the court officers who have to deliver babies. Dun Dun.

Sharpe described the moment as “joyful and sad,” which is not something defense lawyers get to say much.

But that still means Randazzo gave birth… in a courtroom… because the system couldn’t be bothered to defer an arraignment for some petty charges long enough to welcome a human being into the world. In fact, the arraignment went ahead without her.

Randazzo was arrested Thursday night and charged with trespassing — on her own building’s roof — and a drug-possession charge. This should’ve been a ticket, but she apparently had an open warrant, making her ineligible for a desk appearance. Around 3:30 a.m. Friday she told officers that she was pregnant and needed medical attention. They took her to Coney Island Hospital, where the world famous hot dog eating trauma unit assessed her and then sent on her way. She gave birth roughly four hours later in a Brooklyn courtroom.

Pregnancy is a quirky condition, but a probe into how the hospital decided to send a nine-month pregnant woman on the brink of giving birth to a courtroom may be necessary. Maybe they had every medical reason to discharge Randazzo, but one has to wonder if the NYPD put a thumb on independent medical judgment — at least implicitly — to get the patient ferried out of the hospital quickly. The custodial dynamic doesn’t just affect how cops treat the patient — it affects how clinicians do.

New York has a law on this. The 2009 Anti-Shackling statute was the product of a nine-year legislative slog, introduced session after session before finally passing. It prohibits the use of restraints on incarcerated women during transport to give birth, during labor and delivery, and during post-natal recovery. But it’s been consistently ignored. In 2019, the City of New York paid a $610,000 settlement to a woman who’d been shackled at wrist and ankle while delivering at Montefiore. In 2021, another $750,000 went to a woman kept shackled through active labor at Kings County Hospital. The New York City Bar Association recently noted that even after 2015 amendments proposed to tighten the 2009 law, “loopholes in the law allow these practices to persist in police stations and other custodial settings.” The NYPD’s own internal guidelines on the subject have been labeled “vague and inadequate” by the same Legal Aid groups that issued this weekend’s statement.

Even if she weren’t pregnant, what’s the justification for holding someone for 30+ hours on a low-level drug possession charge in the first place. She may have had an open arrest warrant, but if it were for anything significant, the police would make sure that made it into every news article about this. The New York Post is basically a reprint of NYPD press releases and doesn’t even mention the open warrant. New York’s bail reform debates are dominated by tabloid coverage — looking at you again, New York Post — but this is the sort of injustice it exists to address. We don’t need to be locking up minor, non-violent offenders for 30 hours when we know we’re going to eventually release them anyway.

Her attorney told the papers that he expects the charges to be dismissed, but can we talk about the fact that the arraignment went ahead without her? Once there’s a child dropped on the floor of the courtroom, it seems as though the judge could maybe reschedule the matter for next week. This is another matter that requires some investigation.

The mother and baby, by all accounts, are doing well. That is a tribute to luck and to the court officers who reacted quickly. However, this was a failure all around and someone needs to take a hard look at how we got here.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.