One of the little secrets of the courts is that, aside from scolding and threatening, New York’s judges have limited control over the court system they appear to run. The courthouse players they control the least are the busy, privately hired defense lawyers like Mr. Rankin, who race from court to court across the city, living on their cellphones and billing for their time. The judges rarely take steps like issuing fines or holding a lawyer in contempt, which are viewed as extreme and difficult to impose. They are even more reluctant to pull a privately retained lawyer off a case.

“It’s a thorny legal issue most judges don’t want to get into,” said Justice Barry M. Kamins, the administrative judge of the city’s Criminal Court. “It can tie up the court system for an inordinate amount of time.”

Mr. Rankin, 44, has enjoyed a long string of victories at courthouses around the city in cases centering on shootings, beatings and other mayhem. A master courtroom performer, he insisted in a series of interviews that he did not use delay as a tool. He said he was just swamped with clients because of his track record of success, a record that he said let him charge $50,000 for a murder trial and $30,000 for an assault trial.

“Word travels fast,” he said, “when you are successful at getting them off.”

But over the months that a reporter spent in the Bronx courts, the stabbing case stood out as an example of the way a case devolves into a morass. The trial not only started late but also turned into a courthouse marathon, expanding from a projected two or three weeks to more than two excruciatingly drawn-out months. The lethargy seemed contagious. After a few feeble efforts to “get this case going,” even the lead prosecutor and the judge seemed to give up. Only one person seemed comfortable with the pace — Mr. Rankin, who once told a judge: “I am a trial, trial, trial, trial, trial after trial attorney.”

A Good Fit for the Bronx

Raised in Queens, with an office in Brooklyn and clients across the city, Mr. Rankin fit right in with the Bronx, the city’s capital of court delays.

One day in the middle of the stabbing trial, he was hunched in the hallway of the Bronx courthouse, tie askew, papers on his lap, his cellphone to his ear, his current defendant’s father next to him.