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Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Consultant gives ideas for efficiency

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Trial date certainty should be a major goal, the state Supreme Court says.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — An Ohio Supreme Court consultant blasts what she termed the "cattle call" method of scheduling multiple cases for potential trial in the same courtroom — at the same date and time — in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

"Establishing firm and credible trial dates is essential," wrote Atty. Stephanie E. Hess, manager of the top court's case management section, in a recent report.

Hess' yearlong study, performed at no cost to the county, was requested by the Mahoning County Criminal Justice Working Group, a group of county officials studying ways to improve the criminal justice system. Her case-flow management and operational review of the court's general division focused on ways to ease the common pleas court case backlog, thereby reduce jail crowding. The court's general division consists of the five trial judges who handle major criminal and civil cases.

The multiple case scheduling system "leads to a large number of defendants, victims and attorneys all competing for the judge's time at once," resulting in inefficient time management for judges and their staffs, lawyers and parties to cases, she observed. The flawed system increases postponements of trials due to unpreparedness of the parties, who aren't certain which case is actually going to trial at the scheduled time, Hess found.

Frustration

"The judges have to determine how to change this. It certainly appears that everybody involved gets frustrated on days where these cattle calls are involved," said county Commissioner John A. McNally, who is a lawyer and chairman of the criminal justice working group.

"I think it was positive," Judge Maureen A. Sweeney, administrative judge of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, said of the Hess report.

"It opened our eyes to a lot of things that other courts are doing and how we can improve our system," she added. "She brought up some good points. I mean we all need to have somebody on the outside looking in, and that's what the Supreme Court did for us."

Judge Sweeney said it's likely the court will eventually adopt most of Hess' recommendations.

Although a judge can only start one trial at a given time, Robert Regula, common pleas court administrator, said his office schedules more than one case for trial at a time in the same courtroom to preserve speedy trial rights by making sure criminal trials are set within 90 days of a defendant's arrest.

Defendants in jail will usually, but not always, waive their right to be tried within 90 days of their arrest, he said. If one defendant pleads guilty instead of going to trial, the practice of scheduling more than one case at a time allows an alternative case to be tried, he said.

Judge Sweeney said she thinks the maximum reasonable number of cases that can be scheduled as candidates for potential trial in the same courtroom at the same time is four.

Number can be problem

Regula said three to five is reasonable but added that, unfortunately, there have sometimes been as many as 18 set at once in the same courtroom. "My goal is to make sure that doesn't happen again because nothing gets accomplished by that," Regula said.

"The overarching goal of trial date certainty is to have only cases set for trial which are anticipated to actually go to trial," Hess wrote. To better achieve trial date certainty, she recommended that the judges rule on pretrial motions before the trial date, refer civil cases to mediation at an early stage, and set firm policies to limit postponements.

To help get trials started at the scheduled time, Regula said his office will do its best to schedule hearings on pretrial motions well in advance of the trial date. A major strategy for avoiding the "cattle calls" is to make pretrial hearings as productive as possible, Regula said.

"Implementation and continuous monitoring of a scheduling system, which promotes trial date certainty, may also have a positive impact upon the jail population by decreasing the average number of days to disposition [termination of a criminal case by acquittal or sentencing]," Hess wrote.

To help move the docket faster and give civil cases time to be heard, Judge Sweeney said she plans to begin in her courtroom a rotating system of three weeks of criminal trials, followed by two weeks of civil trials, another three weeks of criminal trials, and then a week devoted to hearing pretrial motions.

What's beng done

Regula said his office has already adopted Hess' recommendation to designate assignment officers permanently to particular judges to promote consistency, efficiency and accuracy, rather than rotating them annually among the judges.

"It can only make us better in terms of how we are managing our courts," Regula said of Hess' report. "It would be very gratifying to me to see us correct the problems that we have and make things run very efficiently here," Regula added.

Some of the other recommendations in Hess' report are:

Adopt standard operating procedures for all functions of the assignment office, which schedules and tracks cases. Regula said he's working on this.

All documents in case files should be in chronological order and bound to the file, rather than loose in the folder, Hess said. Kathi McNabb-Welsh, chief deputy clerk of courts, said she would discuss that recommendation with the judges and follow their wishes.

The court should collaborate with the sheriff's department to develop reports on jail inmates that would be most useful in monitoring the criminal caseload, with reports on jail inmates sent daily to the judges.

Bailiffs need to become more proactive in case-flow management.

The court should consider hiring a second mediator to help with civil cases. Regula said no new hiring can occur until the county knows the outcome of the sales tax renewal before the voters May 8.

milliken@vindy.com

Tuesday, April 10, 2007