Lawyers fight for defendant's right to use accessible courthouse restroom
A defendant who uses a wheelchair began wearing diapers to the Manhattan criminal courthouse after she wasn’t allowed to use an accessible restroom last year.
Accused credit-card scammer Banetta Grant was in the holding pen so many hours without a restroom that she urinated on herself before appearing in court, according to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which is representing Grant in her fight to use an accessible restroom. The New York Times tells her story in an About New York column.
Grant’s lawyers say she asked to use an accessible restroom in last year’s incident, but a corrections officer refused to take her to a public part of the building to use it. “The problem goes beyond carpentry or plumbing,” the story says. “It’s a failure to see a human in a chair, and a small, telling travesty.”
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest sought accommodations for Grant in a letter to the chief lawyer for the Corrections Department. Katherine Rosenfeld, legal director of the group, tells the Times that the letter was acknowledged but not answered. “I’m very distressed that we wrote this calm, problem-solving letter and got nothing in response,” Rosenfeld told the newspaper.
But the department apparently took notice. When Grant was in the holding pen awaiting sentencing on Tuesday, she asked to use the restroom. This time four corrections officers escorted her to an accessible restroom in a public part of the court building.
