Pompo

Even jury hiring is frozen
To cut costs, New Hampshire courts won't hold criminal or civil jury trials for a month. At least 19 other states have slashed court budgets and other state services.
12/22/08|Los Angeles Times| by Bob Drogin



Come February, the red-brick Rockingham County Courthouse, one of New Hampshire's busiest, will arraign criminal suspects, process legal motions and otherwise deal with murders, mayhem and contract disputes. What it won't do is hold jury trials.

The economic storm has come to this: Justice is being delayed or disrupted in state courtrooms across the country.

Financially strapped New Hampshire has become a poster child for the problem. Among other cost-cutting measures, state courts will halt for a month all civil and criminal jury trials early next year to save $73,000 in jurors' per diems. Officials warn they may add another four-week suspension.

"It brings our system almost to a screeching halt," said county prosecutor James M. Reams. His aides are scrambling to reschedule 77 criminal trials that were on the February docket.

"All the effort to subpoena witnesses and prepare for those trials is right out the window," Reams said, frustration in his voice. "Internally, it's a monumental waste of time. We'll have to redo everything."


At least 19 other states, including California, have slashed court budgets and other government services as their economies have tanked, said Daniel Hall, vice president of the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit in Williamsburg, Va.

"Courts are there to provide a fair and impartial resolution of disputes," Hall said. "When you start affecting that, you affect who we are."

California cut its judicial branch budget by more than $200 million, or about 10%, in the current fiscal year, and further reductions are almost certain as the state grapples with a projected $40-billion deficit. A Republican proposal unveiled last week, for example, would trim a further $205 million from the judiciary.

H.D. Palmer, spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's finance department, said it was "not yet clear" whether the judiciary would be granted an exemption to the governor's order to reduce state payrolls by 10% through layoffs and unpaid furloughs.

Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to a speedy trial. Judges usually give such trials priority over civil cases involving broken sidewalks, medical malpractice and the like.

As a result, civil litigation and family law cases are bearing the brunt of the disruptions. And cascading bankruptcies, foreclosures and business disputes have only increased the backlog.

After two rounds of budget cuts in Florida, courts have laid off 280 clerks, lawyers and other staff members, and cut funding for a judges' unit that helps resolve civil disputes. State legislators meeting next month are expected to demand more spending cuts.

An additional 10% reduction would mean "all civil cases in the state of Florida would virtually be suspended," Belvin Perry Jr., chief judge of Florida's 9th Judicial Circuit and chairman of a trial court budget commission, warned a legislative committee in Tallahassee this month.

In Vermont, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul L. Reiber recently proposed closing as many as seven county courts, as well as laying off employees, to help ease a budget deficit. The state already shuts district and family courts half a day each week to save money.

"None of our choices are good," Reiber conceded in a memo to court employees.

With rising joblessness and falling revenues, New Hampshire projects a budget deficit this year of $250 million. The crisis has forced Gov. John Lynch to seek spending cuts across state government, including the judicial system.

John T. Broderick, chief justice of the state Supreme Court, has carved $2.7 million from the judicial budget. In addition to the one-month halt in jury trials and trimming back courtroom security, seven of the state's 59 judgeships will be left vacant through June, when the fiscal year ends. Three of the empty slots are in trial courts.

Worse, Broderick said, he may need to suspend jury trials for another month, and leave open a Supreme Court slot after one of the five justices retires in February. It is the state's only appellate court.

"In my 36 years here as a lawyer and judge, I've never felt as insecure about the state courts in terms of operations and resources as I do now," Broderick said.

Robert J. Lynn, chief justice of the superior courts, which conduct all New Hampshire jury trials, said he fears the delays inevitably will cause damage. "There is some element of 'justice delayed, justice denied,' no doubt about it," he said.

Christopher Keating, executive director of the New Hampshire Public Defender program, said his chief concern now is "people in custody who will endure delays in getting their day in court."

The state Supreme Court threw out two criminal cases this year because trials did not begin within six months of arraignment, the legal limit. Prosecutors fear more cases may be dismissed.

Delays in jury trials in 2001 and 2002, during a previous budget crisis, caused less disruption because they involved fewer cases, said John Safford, Superior Court clerk in the Hillsborough County district that includes Manchester, the largest city.

This time, he needs to reschedule up to 100 trials.

"I've been here 30 years," he said. "This is the worst I've ever seen it."


The delays may encourage some defendants to seek plea deals, or litigants to settle out of court.

Some counties are advocating out-of-court mediation and conflict resolution.

But other cases may face new hurdles as time passes.

"Witnesses die, memories fade; things happen when trials are delayed," said John Hutson, dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center, the state's only law school. "Then you'll get a bow wave of cases, so they pile up the next month and it's hard to catch up."

The slowdown has unnerved many residents in the state, where granite-hewn courthouses often anchor Colonial-era town squares.

"You're talking about erosion of our fundamental civic fabric," said Ellen J. Shemitz, executive director of the New Hampshire Assn. for Justice, which represents civil trial attorneys.

James J. Tenn Jr., incoming president of the state's bar association, said that as the crisis has grown, New Hampshire courts have been slow to process orders, respond to lawyers' requests and "do the daily work."

"We've just seen delay after delay after delay," said David Slawsky, a civil lawyer in Manchester. "The court process is breaking down."

Dennis Ducharme, a Manchester attorney, received cancellation notices last week for four personal injury cases scheduled for trial next year. He worries that a delay of six months, perhaps longer, will make witnesses less willing to testify.

"The longer you drag it out, the more reluctant people become to cooperate," he said.

In Newport, in the rural west, lawyer Lisa Wellman-Ally has seen a property rights trial postponed four times. Each time, she has prepared 100 exhibits, re-subpoenaed witnesses, refreshed her arguments and billed her client for the time.

"Then we would get bounced again," she said.

No new trial date has been scheduled.

[News Admin. note : If there was only a way to save money and help unclog our judicial systems It seems to me that I read of a way to do this, somewhere......... hmmm....... oh yeah, I remember now!!!!! Stop persecuting Cannabis users!!!!!! What a bunch of knuckleheads ]

dirtbomb

I agree that they could save a lot of time and money by not prosecuting for Cannabis possession.
What scares me is the real criminals that will fall through the net.

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BillieBudd

Yeah but decriminalization sends the wrong message to the children, don'cha know.
Maybe those morons will discover that a levied fine for possession is a net gain for the state or town, instead of paying for all that "justice" (cop overtime, public defender, bailiff, probation, jail guards, etc.)on the backs of the taxpayers, not to mention saddling a large chunk of the population to marginal employment (or gasp!! the dreaded welfare) due to the record they carry for the rest of their days...

KWhite

Fines my ass!

I must respectfully disagree.

This is and has always been about nothing more important and nothing less important than the freedom to decide what we do with ourselves!

Are you fined for deciding to drink a beer? Or have a Scotch, eat a steak, or eat so many that you become an obese drain on the communal health system in the future?

Freedom. Constitutionally guaranteed. It's been warped ever further out of shape by one bad precedent after another, held up by false logic and stupid morality over decades.

I hear people say we have more pressing matters to attend to right now, but what in the Goddess' name can be more pressing than giving ALL Americans their freedom back?

Not to mention that it would stop, immediately, a large portion of this financial drain.

It would also allow those damaged by the drug war to come back into the light and start trying to rebuild their lives, take good work where they can get it and pay taxes!

Much luck, sorry about my tone.

I've been fighting this for a long damned time

Kelly.

Purpose420

Damn are you sure we can't waste more money? It's such a injustice we can't spend that money and prosecute those people, and then we can throw them into a prison system (that don't work) and spend more money taking care of them.

How long are the law makers gonna run this country with their head up their asses?

__________________
"If (marijuana) were unknown, and bio-prospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia -- many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body." -- The Economist, "Reefer Madness: Marijuana Is Medically Useful Whether Politicians Like It or Not," April 29, 2006

Long live the VaporStore

BillieBudd

In principle we most heartily agree, Kelly. But I subscribe to the baby steps theory of change, and in New Hampshire that is the only way. There are some serious Medievalists over there, even though they push the state run alcohol business all the way to the Boston market...with decriminalization, at the least, a possession charge would not become a life ruining event for an otherwise upstanding citizen and would free resources to clean up the domestic messes caused by over enthusiastic liquor consumption...
We are soldiers in the same army..keep up the fight