Judge Maurice Brill looked more dispirited than anything else. You could see it in his brow, the way it furrowed deeper than usual, and in his shoulders, which dropped sharper as the day wore on. And wore on it did. On this given day last week, Brill was hearing summonses in Queens, which is unenviable duty, thanks to a crackdown on Queens Boulevard that is filling his and other courtrooms with hundreds of extra criminals to process every day. These criminals are jaywalkers. Trapped in that governmental gray area between the need to do something -- hey, we're talking about the famed "Boulevard of Death" here! -- and a mayor who measures success by the number of summonses issued, cops along Queens Boulevard have written nearly 5,500 jaywalking summonses since early December. It might help to point out that in Manhattan -- where crossing against a light is as much a birthright as complaining about electric bills, auto insurance rates or Brie prices -- the number of tickets written in a year can be counted on a couple of hands. The thousands of speeding tickets issued during the Queens Boulevard crackdown can be paid by mail, yet jaywalking tickets must be answered in person (as if it is the pedestrians who is running over and killing pedestrians, not the speeding cars). The accused start showing up at the courthouse on the very same Boulevard of Death at around 7 a.m., and when the court officers arrive at 9, the line of vicious jaywalking criminals is often around the corner. Brill's response to the waves of jaywalkers -- sprinkled in between cases of public urination, beer drinking, littering and spitting in public (spitting?) -- is to handle their cases in 10-person group "trials." "The reason you are in court is because the police have been told to crack down very forcefully on Queens Boulevard," Brill lectured his first 10 jaywalkers -- hardened criminals, all of them! -- when they finally got before his bench four hours after they arrived at the courthouse. (Is this any way to run a police state?) Brill finished up his lecture and then did what he always does: dismissed the jaywalkers without fining them. (It's not that Brill is pro-jaywalking, it's just that he simply has too many cases to handle. Judicial gridlock is common in Queens, where almost 1,000 jaywalkers were once released simply because there wasn't space to hold them all. Court officers are already groaning as the wave of open-container violations from Shea Stadium parking lots -- another enforcement crackdown -- is about to crash over them.) Granted, most jaywalkers are happy to be free and clear of Brill, but there's a pervasive sentiment that there's got to be a better use of people's time, police manpower and judicial resources than courtroom gridlock, blanket dismissals and patronizing lectures. "This whole thing is a waste," said Jerome Keel, 42, who was first on line at 7:15 and jaywalked out of Brill's courtroom after missing a half-day of work. "If they were really serious about safety, they would fix the traffic lights so you could make it all the way across on one `Walk' signal." Jose Morales, also 42, who got his jaywalking summons when he was crossing Queens Boulevard with his daughter to find a bathroom, agreed. "I crossed half of Queens Boulevard and then a cop waived me over," said Morales, a minister at a Brooklyn church. "It was a set-up. I mean, that cop could've just as easily stopped me, but he waited until I crossed so he could give me that ticket. And then he told me I was a bad influence on my daughter." (Is THAT any way to run a police state?) A steady stream of "bad influences" flowed through Brill's courtroom all day: John Georgiadis, 59, who crossed mid-block to pick up his elderly wife from a doctor's appointment; Rodolfo Castillo, 34, who was in a group of 11 jaywalkers, but was the only one who got a ticket; Abil Alli, 27, who was rushing to get Visine at the Rite Aid because his wife had an agonizing speck of dirt in her eye (her eye, by the way, didn't enjoy the ticket-caused delay); Cesar and Melvia Aguilar, who still don't know why they got tickets after they almost got hit by a car going through a red light; and financial adviser Frank Wolson, who didn't mind paying the ticket, but definitely minded being away from the market all day to do it. Maybe the mayor did him favor. The Dow lost 80 points on the day, so being busted for jaywalking probably saved him a bundle. --30-- email: gershny@yahoo.com