Lawyers for New York City will be back in court today before State Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo, who so far has shown a singular unwillingness to understand the unusual circumstances of the Republican National Convention. At issue is how much a judge will fine the city for holding for more than 24 hours some protesters arrested at the convention.

The case stems from a New York state precedent that says people can’t be held without being arraigned for more than 24 hours unless there is an acceptable explanation for the delay. The city’s explanation – that the 1,300 arrests in just four hours on August 31 were far more than the 250 to 300 arrests on an ordinary day in Manhattan – strikes us as acceptable.

The participants in the August 31 protests were planning to get arrested and hoping to disrupt the city and the convention. The city notes that many of them were women, which required reconfiguration of cell space that is ordinarily devoted to men, who make up the majority of ordinary arrests. The city further notes that many of those arrested were from outside New York, which makes it less likely they would show up for court if they were released with mere desk appearance tickets.

The lawyer for the protesters, Norman Siegel, makes the point – one we, incidentally, agree with – that habeas corpus is part of the American bedrock. He claims that some of those arrested were innocent bystanders, and he says that he asked the judge to rule the city in contempt of court only after the city refused immediately to comply with a court order to release arrested protesters. He says some protesters were told they would only be released after the convention ended, and that police used the same tactics against protesters in New York during the February 2002 World Economic Forum.

Mr. Siegel and the judge made their point to the city emphatically by winning the release of the protesters in a matter of hours – thus setting the dangerous and nonsensical precedent that in order to get out of jail free, a mob need only be large enough that the court system can’t process it fully in 24 hours. Pressing the case further and seeking fines against the city serves only to punish the taxpayers, who will end up footing the bill for any fine.