Backlogged drug cases create jammed court calendar for local judicial circuit
By Eric Beavers
Walker County Messenger (LaFayette, GA)
November 10, 2006
A spike in drug cases is one factor that has led to the busiest court calendar in Walker County’s history, attorneys said.
District Attorney Herbert “Buzz” Franklin said a deal struck between legislators and an independent lab in Pennsylvania wiped out the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s backlog of testing drug evidence, but opened the floodgates for indictments and trials.
“A lot of that is due to the backlogged drug cases. The Georgia General Assembly, in their infinite wisdom, sent all these backlogged cases up to Pennsylvania to be worked,” Franklin said. “All of those are now coming on line and we’re getting them on the docket. That’s a big part of the increase in the calendar.”
Because the lab analysts are in Pennsylvania rather than the state crime lab in Summerville, which is the usual testing facility, getting witnesses in court to testify is tricky. The lab agreed to pay for travel and other expenses for experts to come testify, but the schedule is difficult to nail down.
“It’s a lot different from getting a witness from the Summerville crime lab to come up and testify about drugs than getting a witnesses from the Pennsylvania crime lab to come down and testify, Franklin said. “This term of court over in Dade County we had a critical witness on toxicology that couldn’t be here.
“We had two or three witnesses on other drug cases that couldn’t be here. We had a total of six cases continued on the Dade County calendar because we couldn’t get our witness here,” he said. “It’s not working out very smoothly.”
David Dunn, public defender, said his caseload isn’t quite as heavy as Franklin’s, but it’s close. Dunn’s office handles the indigent cases — those who can’t afford to hire an attorney — while Franklin’s office has to prosecute every case.
Conflicts with scheduling cases
Dunn said another reason for the larger court calendar is due to scheduling
conflicts in the judicial circuit. Experimental scheduling between
the four courthouses in the circuit also slowed the wheels of justice.
“It’s been a very hectic fall,” Dunn said. “It’s been a combination of things. There was a lot of overlap in court sessions that we’ve not had in the past. It was just the way the calendar was set up this year. They were trying some different things and I think they’re going to not do it next year.”
Franklin agreed scheduling was a problem during the past year. For example, he said, clients are able to enter their pleas and motions this week while court is in session in Dade County.
“A lot of my staff who would otherwise be over here (in Walker County) taking care of pleas will not be here because they’ll be in Dade County waiting to see if their case is going to be tried or actually trying the case,” he said.
The nature of their business means Franklin and his staff handle more cases than the attorneys in Dunn’s office.
“There are a number of criminal cases being prosecuted that our office doesn’t handle,” Dunn said. “We do handle the overwhelming majority of them.”
Franklin hopes the work load will get back to normal for his staff soon.
“I think this will be a peak, but the numbers are always going up,” he said. “For example, from 2003 to 2004 we had about a one-third increase in case load. That has continued and we haven’t seen a downward dip.”