85 Criminal Cases Loom Monday for 53 Judges

Monday morning, there are expected to be 85 felony cases ready for trial before 53 Orange County Superior Court judges--the biggest overload of criminal cases in the last four years, thanks to a policy prohibiting county prosecutors from discussing felony cases in judges’ chambers.

But the new presiding judge of the Superior Court predicts that things will run smoothly next week and said that a crisis stage has not yet been reached.

“We’re facing a serious problem, but it’s one I’m sure we can handle,” said Harmon G. Scoville, who moved into the presiding judge’s offices Friday. “We’re gathering statistics now. Give us two to three weeks, and we can tell more by then how serious the situation is.”

Orange County Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks said last Oct. 9 that he would no longer allow his prosecutors to participate in private discussions of felony cases in judges’ chambers. Under his new policy, prosecutors can discuss felony dispositions only in open court.

Predicted Chaos

Defense lawyers who refuse to discuss their clients’ cases in open court predicted that the new policy would result in chaos for the system. Few cases would be settled, and the numbers of cases proceeding to trial would significantly increase, they said.

The criminal caseload has indeed increased. Before the new policy was implemented, the county had an average of 450 criminal cases pending. That number has now jumped to nearly 700, according to Superior Court administrator Alan Slater.

To handle the load, outgoing Presiding Judge Everett W. Dickey increased the number of judges handling criminal matters from 16 to more than 30. On some days only two judges on the bench were handling civil cases, though family law, Juvenile Court, and law and motion calendars were kept in operation.

Dickey’s biggest headache came Dec. 22, when he had 55 criminal cases ready for trial. That crisis passed, however, when many of the defense attorneys in those cases agreed to postpone their cases.

But Monday’s situation appears more serious.

“We had the holidays coming up, which helped us out when the caseload got high just before Christmas,” Slater said. “We won’t have that this time.”

Slater and Scoville are confident that next week’s caseload can be handled. But despite their air of calm, Slater has been in constant contact with the state Judicial Council, which can approve appointment of extra judges on a temporary basis if needed.

Constitutionally, a defendant must be brought to trial within 60 days of his arraignment unless he waives his right to a speedy trial.

“I can tell you now that we are not going to allow any criminal cases to be dismissed because no judges are available,” Scoville said.

But Scoville and Slater have other options available without requiring the Judicial Council to take action. Municipal judges in the county can be elevated to Superior Court temporarily to handle criminal cases, if needed. Also, Scoville can bring in judges from the family-law panel if needed.

But Scoville agrees that it’s not wise to keep borrowing judges for criminal cases on a permanent basis.

“If the statistics in a few weeks show that this problem is going to be with us for a while, I’ve got some ideas what to do about it,” Scoville said. But he said it was premature to disclose any of those ideas now.

Civil Cases Jump

Scoville and Slater insisted, however, that they are determined not to let litigants in civil lawsuits suffer much longer because criminal cases are taking up so many courtrooms. In the last two months, the civil cases pending in the county have increased from 6,000 to 7,000.

“We’ve worked hard to reduce our civil cases in the last few years,” Slater said. “We don’t want to lose any of the ground we’ve gained.”

A few years ago, Slater said, Orange County had the greatest civil backlog in the state. Four years ago, it took civil cases in the county an average of 30 months to get to trial. That had been reduced to 14 months before Hicks’ Oct. 9 policy took effect.

Scoville and Dickey both declined to give any opinion about Hicks’ policy.

“We are here to serve,” Scoville said. “What the district attorney does is his business.”

Dickey pointed out that when Proposition 8--known as the Victims’ Bill of Rights--passed in 1982, the number of criminal cases pending in Superior Court increased, too. Although Hicks had a no-plea-bargain policy in effect a year ahead of Proposition 8, Slater said, reaction to the voter initiative led to a peak of more than 900 cases in the system.

“We had more in 1982 than we have now, and we managed to handle it,” Slater said.