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A 24-year-old Manhattan man has spent nearly seven years in New York City’s Rikers Island jail awaiting trial, a jaw-dropping record for pretrial incarceration that is unlikely to end soon, reports The New York Post.

Carlos Montero was a teenager when he was arrested on Oct. 23, 2008, after one of his friends fatally stabbed a man and the other slashed another man during a robbery in the city’s Washington Heights neighborhood, the Post says.

Since then, Montero has spent years trying to get his case tried separately from his codefendants, the Post says, but the court has balked at the requests. His lawyer now says it’s a waste of time to seek bail for Montero, saying it’s a lost cause, the report says.

How did this happen?

The Post says the statute that guarantees a prisoner’s right to a trial within 180 days does not apply to murder cases. And the Sixth Amendment does not map out a timeline.

From The New York Post:

So Montero is still waiting for his day in court, even after 77 appearances in Manhattan Supreme Court before Justice Ronald Zweibel — and 2,423 days behind bars.

Montero said he was aware of the recent suicide of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teen who was locked up on Rikers for three years while he awaited trial [for a petty robbery charge].

Browder was eventually cleared, but his lawyer said the abuse that the teen suffered at Rikers led to his June 6 suicide.

Montero tells the Post that he is hopeful he can still get justice. Given the injustice of this all, we are hopeful, too. Good luck.

SOURCE: The New York Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Twitter

Black Man Arrested As Teen Has Already Spent 7 Years In NYC’s Rikers Awaiting Trial  was originally published on newsone.com