Professors Cheryl Bader and Bruce Green were quoted in a New York Times article discussing the legality of judges ordering defendants to get vaccinated against Covid-19. While Professor Bader expressed skepticism about the logic of the order, Professor Green commended the judges’ creativity in protecting New York’s communities.
The defendant was charged with a number of minor crimes, including drug possession and shoplifting. He was prepared to plead guilty, and prosecutors agreed. But a Bronx judge approving the deal added his own unusual condition.
The defendant had to get a Covid-19 vaccine.
A week later, a Manhattan judge made the same order, this time of a woman seeking bail before a trial.
…
A lawyer for Ms. Pimental, Ian Marcus Amelkin, said that she had told Judge Rakoff that she did not object to being vaccinated. But Cheryl Bader, a professor at the Fordham University School of Law, said that while she admired Judge Rakoff’s creativity, there was a “potential hole in the underlying logic.”
Ms. Bader said it was the premise of the law that Judge Rakoff was tasked with evaluating a defendant’s danger to the community, but not in a general sense — in connection with the criminal charges in question. And the danger of spreading the virus was not clearly connected to the [crime in question].
…
But Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham Law and a former federal prosecutor, said that he did not see Judge Zimmerman’s order as an “incredible intrusion into someone’s bodily integrity.”
“It’s actually doing the defendant a favor because it’s keeping them safe and it’s doing the community a favor by making sure this person’s less likely to transmit the virus,” he said.