Too many cases, not enough prosecutors

By Ray Bowyer
Lee Darragh, district attorney for Georgia's Northeastern Judicial Circuit (Dawson and Hall counties), told the Squires and Stags men's group last month that there is no backlog of court cases in Dawson County, even though the office opened 822 cases in 2007 and is on track to open slightly more this year.

Unfortunately, that is not the case in Pickens County, where there is a three-year backlog of cases, according to District Attorney Joe Hendricks, who is also the DA for Gilmer County as part of the Appalachian Judicial Circuit. In the most recent report available, there were 1,879 pending cases, meaning they had been referred to the office but not yet closed. It would take 36 months to clear those cases - and that's if no other cases were opened between now and then.

At the current rate of increase, a year from now there will be 2,026 cases. The number of pending cases is one for every 16 residents of the county.

The most egregious case is one filed August 23, 1999, for driving while license suspended and no proof of insurance.  That was nine years ago.

Here are some comparable numbers for Dawson County.  There are currently 269 open cases-105 under investigation, and 164 ready to try.  At the current rate of closure, these cases would be closed in less than four months.  There were more cases closed than opened in 2007.

Said Hendricks, "Pickens County has one of the fastest growth rates in the nation; therefore, unfortunately, criminal cases too are on the rise."

One reason for the disparity in the backlogs between Dawson and Pickens counties is the number of attorneys assigned to each DA's office: Dawson has 17, while Pickens has just three, up from one just a few years ago.

"Each of the last three years my office and the court system have worked to move cases through the system," Hendricks said. "However each successive year has seen a greater number of criminal cases than the year before referred to our office."

For instance, Hendricks said, in 2004, there were 471 cases opened and 382 closed.  As of mid-August this year, the DA's office had already closed 444 cases but opened 492 in the same span of time.

Hendricks, who took office in 2005, said there have been a number of changes made to address the backlog. "First, the legislature only within the last two years increased the number of Superior Court judges from two to three, and according to the Council of Superior Court Judges, our caseload now justifies increasing the number of judges to four," the DA said.

In addition, Hendricks said he has implemented a computerized case management system to replace a manual index card system to improve the efficiency of the office and taken a more active role in prosecuting cases in Probate Court. That way, more traffic case can be resolved in Probate Court rather than in Superior Court.

Hendricks said he and the judges and Gilmer and Pickens county commissioners have begun looking at creating a State Court to deal with the increased number of misdemeanor and traffic cases that make up such a large volume of the active calendar. Because the rules that determine the order in which cases are tried place cases that involve serious violent felonies and defendants housed in the local jail ahead of misdemeanor and traffic cases, less serious cases tend to take longer to close. A State Court would give higher priority to those cases and bring them to a swifter conclusion, the DA said.

As for the 1999 suspended license and no-insurance case, a computer glitch in the Clerk's Office kept the case from showing up on the active trial calendar. When that was discovered recently it was placed back on the active trial calendar and it will be handled on the assigned judge's next jury trial calendar.