They are the worst of the county's criminals, the handful of men and women who have been arrested over and over again and convicted repeatedly for murders, robberies and rapes.

Some believe they are unreformable, and statistics show they account for a disproportionate number of the crimes committed countywide.

But legally, on this day, in this court, on this charge, they are innocent until proven guilty.

And there's the rub. Critics of Miami-Dade's new Repeat Offender Court, which started last week, worry it will stigmatize some defendants as hardened thugs. Prosecutors, judges and law enforcement insist that won't be the case. And they hail the new court as the best way to move cases along faster.

The judges in ROCourt, as it's already being called in courthouse circles, will have lighter caseloads and be able to devote all their time to the complicated cases of career criminals. Meanwhile, those cases won't bog down other judges.

''They're usually the worst of the worst, and they're looking at severe penalties so there's absolutely no incentive for them to go to trial,'' Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle explained. ``So delay becomes their objective. Our objective, for our victims, for our witnesses, for the integrity of the case, is to get them to trial.''

Circuit Judges Jorge Jimenez and Peter Lopez both expect to be doing a lot of trials.

''A lot of these defendants have been waiting a long time for trial,'' Jimenez said last week. ``Some of these cases are three years old. Hopefully, we'll be able to accelerate those cases.''

Several other counties, including Broward, already have similar courts, and the state Supreme Court has upheld them as constitutional.

The idea of a career criminal court has been knocking around the Miami-Dade courthouse for years. In 1996, a grand jury urged the county to implement one, in part, because it would save money.

''While these cases remain pending, the defendants are in our local jail, while Dade County's taxpayers bear the costs of their incarceration,'' the jurors wrote.

Back then, the county spent $72.75 a day to house a prisoner. Today, the average cost is $83 a day.

'OUTSTANDING' IDEA

Miami police Chief John Timoney called the idea ''outstanding'' because he hopes it will get more of the county's worst criminals off the street.

''We know for a fact, that if you can get them off the streets, you're going to really dip into the crime rates,'' Timoney said. ``They commit a disproportionate number of the crimes.''

But Public Defender Bennett Brummer said these defendants deserve a fair trial, even if they have been in trouble before. And he worries they won't get one in the new court.

''There is no legitimate reason to create a specialty court to handle repeat offender cases that are exactly the same as those handled in all of the other felony courts,'' he said.

Unlike the existing drug court, the new court does not provide judges with enhanced sentencing powers or defendants with enhanced opportunities for treatment and rehabilitation.

He worries his clients will be labeled bad guys because of their pasts, even though those prior crimes can't legally be brought up in trial, in most cases.

But Fernández Rundle said her office, which will decide who ends up in the new court, is using a fairly simple formula that applies to anyone with the right type and amount of prior convictions.

And Circuit Judge Stanford Blake, the chief administrative judge for the criminal courts, insisted that jurors won't know they're in ROCourt.

'When jurors come to the court, we're not going to be saying to them, `You're going to be trying a case in ROCourt,' '' he said. 'There's no neon light outside the courtroom that says, `You're entering the ROC zone.' ''

Blake, himself a former defense attorney, said he felt defense attorneys should be happy with the new division because it's an effort to get their clients through the system, and if they're innocent, out of jail -- faster.

RACISM CONCERNS

Brummer is skeptical, however. Most of all, he worries the new division is inherently racist.

''In nearly three-quarters of the selected cases, the defendants are black,'' he said. ``In contrast, about 50 percent of the defendants in the rest of the felony courts are black.''

Brummer acknowledged that higher courts have already ruled that it's not a valid legal argument. Brummer says it's a moral one. But with ROCourt already up and running, he's lost that argument, too.

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