Ending delay's injustices
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Opinion/Editorials » Daily Editorial Sunday, November 02, 2003
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Ending delay's injustices
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With Chief Justice Joseph Lambert's acknowledgement last week that a
problem in need of solution does in fact exist, Kentucky's criminal
courts may soon be less vulnerable to the shocking breakdowns
documented by this newspaper's recent series, "Justice Delayed,
Justice Denied."
Mr. Lambert has initiated a process of change that, with proper
vigor and follow through, could lead to far fewer cases falling
through the cracks and into endless limbo.
He has taken a crucial first step by asking all judicial circuits to
establish, by year's end, procedures to prevent excessive delays,
and he is rightly insisting that those procedures require judges to
do what many already do: assign a date certain for every subsequent
step in every case.
That simple rule should go a long way toward preventing cases from
being deep-sixed by either benign or malign neglect.
Mr. Lambert also promises that the Administrative Office of the
Courts will begin providing more detailed and more frequent
information about the status of cases to both judges and
prosecutors. And he will convene a panel of distinguished judges to
recommend other reforms.
Kentuckians should hope that those judges will do just that. The
panel must not fall victim to more of the defensiveness that has
allowed this problem to persist in Kentucky, even while many other
states openly examined and aggressively tackled it.
It was a year ago that this newspaper exposed the appalling backlog
of cases that had subverted justice in Bullitt County.
The official response was to treat it as an anomaly.
But now it's clear that Bullitt wasn't an isolated failure. The
newspaper's latest investigation unearthed equal miscarriages —
significant delays and unconscionable injustices — in five of eight
counties that reporters examined, including Franklin, the seat of
Kentucky government.
Statewide, it found that more than 2,000 indictments have been
pending for more than three years, and comparisons with other states
showed that on average the wheels of criminal justice turn much
slower here than elsewhere.
Even so, Mr. Lambert still took pains to refer to "the failure of a
few Kentucky courts" in the announcement of his initiative.
Yes, but the real failure has not been that of a few courts, but the
reluctance of legal authorities to accept the need for
straightforward rules and procedures, for aggressive and public
monitoring mechanisms and for assigning clear responsibility for
pushing cases to a just conclusion.
Without such clarity, even the citizens of counties whose courts
generally function well are vulnerable to awful lapses, and even the
courts that are efficient today are at risk of becoming inefficient
as soon as the next election.
In addition, excessive delays may be a reflection of other
institutions' failures, such as inadequate police work or a shortage
of public defenders. More demanding court procedures would end up
rightly focusing public attention on those failings instead of
wrongly accommodating them.
Mr. Lambert has now begun the necessary process of reform, and the
state's bench and bar must fully embrace and further the cause.
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