State of the Judicary

Here’s a snippet courtesy of Galloway:

Ladies and gentlemen, the state of Georgia’s judiciary stands at a crossroads. There is no question that we all have to do our fair share to help balance our state’s budget. However, it has become increasingly difficult to do our constitutionally mandated duties. And that is due to budget reductions.

In 2009, the judicial branch received less than eight-tenths of one percent of the total state appropriations. That represents the judiciary’s smallest share of state appropriations in recent history, even as we have watched our state’s population and needs grow.

We have not resisted sharing the burden of bad economic times. Our judges have volunteered to take furloughs. We have eliminated positions and laid off people whose livelihoods depended on them. We have stopped hiring and giving salary increases. We have closed down law libraries. At the state’s highest court, our operating budget has shrunk so low that we had to return a copy machine that we desperately needed.

Just as Georgia’s courts have received national praise, today we are receiving national attention of a different sort. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal began like this: “The wheels of justice in Georgia are grinding more slowly each day.”

Cuts in state courts, the article says, have led to a growing backlog of cases, with months-long delays for many civil and domestic cases. Those hit hardest are already our most vulnerable citizens – abused children, battered women, the elderly, and others who turn to us for justice.

The consequences of these cuts, though, hit everyone, threatening the basic constitutional rights of civil litigants and criminal defendants as core court functions go by the wayside. And, according to the Wall Street Journal article, while judiciaries are being squeezed nationwide, “Georgia’s situation appears particularly severe.”

With cuts in county budgets, the crisis is compounded across the state, putting some court systems on the edge of an abyss.

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter recently said that a 9 percent funding cut his county commission was considering, would require his office to stop prosecuting cases for five weeks this year. He asked: “Which 9 percent of these victims do you want me to tell, ‘I can’t prosecute your case’?”

The unthinkable has already begun in Hall County, where the courts now close one day a month.

One superior court judge recently told me she has 16 death penalty cases pending**. That backup can be blamed in part on the elimination of funding for senior judges. Senior judges were one of the best bargains this state ever had because they helped process cases through the system, enabling elected judges to spend time on critical cases.

We cannot talk about our court system without acknowledging the Judicial Council – our policy-making body, which is made up of leaders of every class of court. The Judicial Council includes the Administrative Office of the Courts, which provides critical research, technical and administrative support to our state’s courts. In the last five years, the Council’s budget has decreased by more than 20 percent.

Our Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial in criminal cases. That means that if the demand for a speedy trial is not met, that criminal defendant could go free. Due to the speedy trial requirement in criminal cases, some judges have been forced to put civil cases on hold. One judge had to suspend all civil jury trials for six months.

In some parts of the state, it now takes up to two months to get a hearing in a temporary child custody case, when it used to take a couple of weeks. The precedence that criminal cases must take threatens the civil justice system – one that is critical to the health of our businesses, which depend on the courts to enforce contracts.

The reality is this: Our state’s largest court system – Fulton County’s – said earlier this year that it could face the surreal prospect of having to shut its doors some days of the month. Right now in Fulton County, there are 183 murder cases waiting to be tried; half are more than a year old. That county’s three domestic judges each [get] 160 cases a month. Chief Judge Dee Downs put it this way: “This isn’t justice,” she said. “We’re losing the rule of law.”

** I doubt Justice Hunstein would include this if it weren’t true; however, it seems quite unbelievable. It’s possible she was referring to having 16 capital cases in one county as opposed to one courtroom.