{"id":233383,"date":"2026-05-16T00:58:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233383\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T00:58:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:58:50","slug":"how-the-insiders-only-system-breeds-corruption-in-brooklyn-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233383\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Insiders-Only System Breeds Corruption in Brooklyn Courts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the past year, Hell Gate and Type Investigations have been haunting courtrooms, hanging out in strange outerborough political clubhouses, and filing endless requests for transcripts to produce\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/courtsofcontempt.hellgatenyc.com\/?ref=hellgatenyc.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Courts of Contempt<\/a>\u2014our investigation into the machinations of New York&#8217;s broken judicial system.<\/p>\n<p>This installment of our investigation looks at how the Brooklyn Democratic Party&#8217;s tight control of who is elected as a judge in the borough creates a perfect environment for graft and misconduct. After we released the project last week, two characters from this entry\u2014lawyer Sam Sprei and former Brooklyn judge Edward Harold King\u2014were indicted by federal prosecutors for fraud. You can read <a href=\"https:\/\/hellgatenyc.com\/sam-sprei-arrests-shocking-audio-brooklyn-dems\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">our coverage here<\/a>. To see the full Courts of Contempt project and read all the Case Files, you can go\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/courtsofcontempt.hellgatenyc.com\/?ref=hellgatenyc.com\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(If you want to see more work like this and help support worker-owned local journalism, now is a great time to subscribe to Hell Gate, because we&#8217;re\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hellgatenyc.com\/all-rise-for-the-hell-gate-trial-subscription-sale-2\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">running a sale<\/a>. Act now, and we&#8217;ll throw in a beautiful hard copy of our Courts of Contempt zine!)<\/p>\n<p>          Give us your email to read the full story<\/p>\n<p class=\"content-cta__description mb\">\n          Sign up now for our free newsletters.\n    <\/p>\n<p>      <a href=\"https:\/\/hellgatenyc.com\/newsletter\/\" class=\"passata color-hg__text background-hg__background p-match radius-match border text-2125 text-decoration-none mb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n        Sign up<br \/>\n      <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past year, Hell Gate and Type Investigations have been haunting courtrooms, hanging out in strange outerborough&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-233383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}