Street Court | |
---|---|
Genre | nontraditional court show |
Created by | Michael Mazzariello |
Presented by | Michael Mazzariello (a.k.a. Judge Mazz) |
Starring | Michael Mazzariello (a.k.a. Judge Mazz) |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
Production | |
Executive producer | Chris Strand [1] |
Production location | varies |
Running time | 30 minutes [2] |
Production companies | Strand Creative Group MM Productions Litton Entertainment |
Original release | |
Network | Syndication |
Release | September 21, 2009 – May 2010 |
Street Court is a nontraditional court show syndicated for one season by Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina-based Litton Entertainment and hosted by Michael Mazzariello, also referred to as Judge Mazz. Unlike other courtroom shows, Street Court travels across the United States and holds court at the scene of the dispute.
Barter advertising sales were completely handled by NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution Advertising and Media Sales. [2]
Michael Mazzariello had developed the concept and was pointed to a manager through Nancy Grace during a commercial break in her talk show where he was a guest legal expert. [1] Two weeks later, they had a demo reel. [3] Mazzariello's pitch was "Just imagine a judge show where the judge goes to the location." [1]
Strand Creative Group signed on to produce the show. “Mazz in the Hood” and "Street Justice" were considered as show names. Justice was rejected as too "vigilante" and Mazz as too frivolous. About September 2009, Strand began filming Street Court. [1]
Street Court was cleared in 94% of its television markets [2] in the single season produced, and appeared to be well received. The show appeared to be popular in larger markets and especially so in New York, where WPIX aired the show in mid-afternoon. [1] Nevertheless, Litton choose not to renew Street Court after just one season (citing low ratings in other markets) and replaced the series in most of the markets with Judge Karen's Court, a new standard court room series presided over by Karen Mills-Francis, whose Judge Karen was canceled after one season.
Judge Mazz, a New York resident, is characterized by a strong Brooklyn accent [3] and introduced the term "huckalero". [1] Judge Mazz frequently uses it to describe alleged deception on the part of defendants, though he never explained on-air what huckalero means or where it originated. Judge Mazz ends every case with the quote, "That's my ruling, that's it." [1]
Judge Mazzariello was an experience attorney being an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, [1] his founding of the nonprofit East New York Legal Services, and his role as Chief Prosecutor for the New York City Board of Education during the Giuliani administration. The City University of New York School of Law website cites him as an alum.
The East New York native worked as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn from 1990 to 1993 and chief prosecutor for the Board of Education from 1995 to 1998.
The Los Angeles Times reviewed Street Court and other court shows and gave the show 4 gavels out of 5, which only two received behind Judge Judy's 5 gavels. [4]
Judge Judy is an American arbitration-based reality court show presided over by former Manhattan Family Court Judge Judith Sheindlin. The show featured Sheindlin as she adjudicated real-life small-claims disputes within a simulated courtroom set. Prior to the proceedings, all involved parties signed arbitration contracts agreeing to Sheindlin's ruling. The show aired in first-run syndication. As it was during its active years in production, it continues to be distributed by CBS Media Ventures in syndication, now in reruns that still draw notably high ratings.
Judith Susan Sheindlin, also known as Judge Judy, is an American attorney, court-show arbitrator, media personality, television producer, and former prosecutor and Manhattan family court judge.
Divorce Court is an American court show that revolves around settling the disputes of couples going through divorces. The show has had four separate runs, all in first-run syndication. Since the debut of the original series in 1957, it is one of the longest-running syndicated television programs of all time. Divorce Court also holds the record for the longest-running court show of all time, leading the second-place show The People's Court by two years.
Perry Mason is an American legal drama series originally broadcast on CBS television from September 21, 1957, to May 22, 1966. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner. Many episodes are based on stories written by Gardner.
Gerald Phillip Garson was an American lawyer and New York Supreme Court Justice who heard matrimonial divorce and child custody cases in Brooklyn. He was convicted in 2007 of accepting bribes to manipulate the outcomes of divorce proceedings. Garson was imprisoned from June 2007 until December 2009.
Charles Joseph Hynes was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from New York who served as Kings County District Attorney from 1990 to 2013.
Starlet Marie Jones Lugo, better known as Star Jones, is an American lawyer, journalist, television personality, fashion designer, author, and women's and diversity advocate. She is best known as one of the first co-hosts on the ABC morning talk show The View, which she appeared on for nine seasons from 1997–98 through 2005–06. She was also one of sixteen contestants of the fourth installment of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, coming in fifth place. She currently serves as the host of Divorce Court.
These are first-run syndicated television shows that air on commercial broadcast stations in a significant number of markets. If it has only aired in a few markets, it is not significantly important enough to be placed on this list. Note that shows listed here do not necessarily air in every market.
Emily Bazelon is an American journalist. She is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a senior research fellow at Yale Law School, and co-host of the Slate podcast Political Gabfest. She is a former senior editor of Slate. Her work as a writer focuses on law, women, and family issues. She has written two national bestsellers published by Penguin Random House: Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy (2013) and Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (2019). Charged won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Current Interest category, and the 2020 Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. It was also the runner up for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia University and the Nieman Foundation, and a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from the New York Public Library.
Judge Karen is an American arbitration-based reality court show that aired in first-run syndication and ran for one season, during the 2008–09 television period. The series debuted on September 8, 2008, in 48 of the top 50 U.S. markets.
Judge David Young is an American arbitration-based reality court show presided over by former Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge David Young. The series aired in first-run syndication. It premiered on television stations across the United States and Canada on September 10, 2007, and ran for 2 seasons until September 4, 2009.
Preetinder Singh Bharara is an Indian-born American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is currently a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years prior to leading the Southern District of New York.
Michael Mazzariello (also known as Judge Mazz) is an attorney and television personality known for his syndicated courtroom show Street Court where he makes rulings at the scene of the dispute. He also has been featured as a legal expert on CNN, Court TV, and MSNBC. Before starting his show in 2009, Mazzariello had previously served as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and high-profile plaintiffs’ and criminal defense lawyer. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appointed him as the Chief Prosecutor for the New York City Board of Education and he has also served as an adjunct instructor at Marist College. He has never been a judge, although he did unsuccessfully run for town justice of Newburgh, New York in 2003.
A court show is a broadcast programming genre comprising legal dramas and reality legal programming. Court shows present content mainly in the form of legal hearings between plaintiffs and defendants, presided over in one of two formats: scripted/improvised with an actor portraying a judge; or, an arbitration-based reality format with the case handled by an adjudicator who was formerly a judge or attorney.
Raymond Joseph Lohier Jr. is a Canadian-born American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Formerly, he was an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a senior trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He was the chief of the securities and commodities fraud task force in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's office. He was recommended by New York Senator Charles Schumer for nomination to the seat on the Second Circuit that was vacated by Judge Sonia Sotomayor when she was elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States. Lohier is the first Haitian-American to serve as an Article III federal judge and to be confirmed by the United States Senate as a judge.
The Hearst Media Production Group, formerly Litton Syndications and Litton Entertainment, is an American media production and syndication based in New York City, New York and a subsidiary of the Hearst Television division of Hearst Communications, with three additional offices in Boston, Washington, D.C. and Burbank, California. Many of HMPG's programs comply with federally mandated educational and informational requirements.
Kenneth P. Thompson was an American lawyer who served as the District Attorney of Kings County, New York, from 2014 until his death from cancer on October 9, 2016.
Vinoo Varghese is an American lawyer who has defended high-profile clients in New York State and federal courts around the country. He provides legal commentary in print and on television. He has appeared on programs such as Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Ingraham Angle, Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and CBS This Morning. A former prosecutor, Varghese is an outspoken critic of the nearly unlimited power of prosecutors. On March 21, 2020, the New York Daily News published an op-ed that Varghese wrote blasting Governor Andrew Cuomo's decision not to include criminal defense lawyers as "essential" in Cuomo's COVID-19 shutdown order. The next day, criminal defense lawyers were deemed "essential." On May 29, 2020, Varghese wrote an op-ed about the Manhattan DA engaging in selective prosecution by prosecuting Yasmin Seweid in 2016 for a false criminal report, but not Amy Cooper in the Central Park “Karen” incident. Two weeks after the publication of this op-ed, then District Attorney Cy Vance, ordered her arrest.
Tali Farimah Farhadian Weinstein is an American attorney, professor, and politician. She is a former federal and state prosecutor and was a candidate in the 2021 Manhattan District Attorney race. In November 2024, President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate her as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.