Major findings by the JUSTICE DELAYED; JUSTICE DENIED series:
The newspaper found that although there is wide disparity in Kentucky’s
courts in the length of time it takes to complete criminal cases, more than
2,000 indictments across the state have been pending for more than three
years. Experts generally recommend that all felony cases be resolved within
a year, and some states require it.
The Courier-Journal found:
e In Franklin County, more than 600 cases have been dismissed since 1995
because of inattention by prosecutors or the courts. More than two dozen
of those defendants had admitted guilt.
e In Pike County, hundreds of felony indictments piled up, and many were
eventually dismissed.
e In Johnson County, more than one-third of the 434 felony cases that
district judges sent to the grand jury between 1997 and 2001 still had not
been presented to a grand jury by the prosecutor as of the beginning of
this year. That figure included more than half of the cases judges sent to
the grand jury in 2001.
The justice Kentuckians get depends greatly on the county where the crime
is committed.
Different approaches among judges and prosecutors, the lack of state
oversight, and the absence of standards for keeping up with felony cases
affect the time it takes to resolve cases — if they get brought up at all.
And this inequality has an impact on both victims and defendants.
The paper spent eight months looking at the state's criminal-justice system
and found that some felony cases took years to arrive at convictions or
acquittals, while others lingered so long that they were eventually dismissed
for lack of prosecution.
And the pattern continues today. It found that statewide more than 2,000
indictments have been pending for more than three years.
The newspaper examined court records in nine Kentucky counties, looked at
the state's own statistics for all 120 counties, and sent surveys to judges,
prosecutors or court clerks in each of the counties. Interviews and the survey
turned up frequent disagreement over procedure and occasional calls for
reform.
The paper found a county where more than 600 cases have been dismissed
for lack of prosecution during the past eight years.
It found that a long-standing impasse in one county over whose job it was to
keep cases moving resulted in legal paralysis, with hundreds and hundreds
of cases backlogged over the past 20 years.
And it found a three-county circuit where more than 250 cases sat for years
without being presented to a grand jury. Many of those cases are now being
considered by grand juries, which have issued indictments in some and not
others.
The newspaper found that although Kentucky prides itself on having a
modern, efficient court system, its own statistics and some national ones
paint a different picture.
The investigation also showed that some ways the system could work better
are already in use in many other states and some Kentucky counties, largely
due to the initiative of individual prosecutors and judges.
Cases languished or disappeared in the Franklin County court system for two
main reasons:
Longtime Commonwealth's Attorney Morris Burton's office repeatedly
allowed cases to fall by the wayside during his 16-year tenure, which ended
in December 2000.
And Franklin County's two circuit judges didn't always take steps to control
their court dockets; for example, they did not always ensure that each case
always had a date on which it would be reviewed again in court.
Those shortcomings engendered the following results:
One of every five felony indictments in Franklin County over the past two
decades was dismissed for a lack of prosecution.
More than 130 of the dismissed cases had been pending for a decade or
more before they were finally closed. Thirty-nine cases had been pending for
15 years or more; four had been left hanging for 20 years or more.
The cases of more than two dozen defendants who had admitted their guilt
to police, agreed to plead guilty or actually pleaded guilty in court and were
waiting for sentencing languished in court for years. Eventually, they were
dismissed for lack of prosecution, allowing those who had admitted guilt to
escape punishment.
In more than 100 cases, little or nothing appears to have happened after
indicted defendants pleaded innocent and got released on bond. The
defendants did not return for court hearings or other proceedings, because
there were none, according to court records. Eventually, the cases were
dismissed.
About 60 defendants had multiple felony charges dismissed for a lack of
prosecution. Some who had three, four and even five cases dismissed were
convicted later of other offenses in Franklin County or elsewhere.
About 130 criminal cases at least 4 years old were pending in Franklin
County when the newspaper began reviewing cases there earlier this year,
with two dozen dating back to the 1980s. More than half of the 130 cases
have since been dismissed, most for lack of prosecution, and 13 were
resolved by pleas. The rest remain open.
At least 70 other felony cases, many involving drugs, were never acted on by
a Franklin County grand jury even though they were sent there from Franklin
District Court.
Kentucky could deliver justice more quickly by setting time goals for judges,
then holding their feet to the fire to meet them.
The state also could speed up its dockets, experts on courts and case
management say, by adopting a speedy-trial act that spells out how quickly
defendants must be tried in criminal cases.
"It is every prosecutor's nightmare to have charges in a violent crime or sex
offense dismissed because you didn't prosecute it in time."
— W.A. McCormick, chief deputy prosecutor in Little Rock, Ark.
And national authorities on court management say Kentucky could fight the
types of delay common in courts throughout the commonwealth by adopting
measures that have proved effective in "fast courts" around the country,
including some in Kentucky.
Those include:
Cracking down on indefinite postponements and requiring that another date
be set whenever a delay is granted.
Forcing the prosecution to disclose its evidence against the defendant
immediately after indictment.
Setting trial dates earlier in the process and sticking by them.
Encouraging plea bargains well before trial, and setting cut-off dates for
negotiations.
Reviewing dockets annually to look for dead wood — and holding judges
accountable for pruning old cases.
Encouraging prosecutors to present to grand juries all felony cases sent from
district court, even if prosecutors recommend no indictments in some.
Experts on court reform also say that the Kentucky Supreme Court could
lead the way by spelling out that it is the duty of judges — not prosecutors —
to control the criminal docket.
Making such changes would mean modifying the current practice, in which
judges and prosecutors in each judicial circuit administer justice exactly as
they see fit. Now, how fast a criminal case moves depends largely on where
the defendant is indicted.
For instance, over the past seven years, criminal cases were resolved in less
than four months on average in Kentucky's fastest courts, while in some
other counties the average case lingered for 2% years. Forty counties
averaged more than a year.
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