Strained to the Breaking Point

The unforeseen consequences of congressional tinkering with the federal penal code and an over-reliance on the courts as the mechanism for resolving the drug problem have strained the federal court system to the breaking point.

The problem begins, of course, with the simple volume of drug cases now flooding into the federal and state courts. On the federal level, prosecutions for violations of the narcotics statutes have risen by 22% over the past 10 years and now make up fully 44% of all criminal trials conducted in U.S. government courts. Some analysts estimate that the number of such cases may increase by as much as 50% over the next 24 months.

The impact of these cases on the federal courts has been exacerbated by a number of recent congressional acts. One was passage of the Speedy Trial Act, which requires that criminal defendants be brought to trial within 10 weeks of their indictment. In federal jurisdictions with large numbers of drug-related indictments--and the number of such jurisdictions is growing--that means that civil actions must wait while the criminal trials take precedence.

In fact, while the number of civil lawsuits filed in federal court actually has dropped by 10% over the past two years, the number of such cases awaiting disposition for more than three years has climbed by about 33%.

This situation has further deteriorated because of new federal statutes that have increased penalties for various violations of the narcotics laws and because of the imposition of so-called federal sentencing guidelines that have deprived judges of much of the latitude they once had in such cases. Hence, more defendants than ever before are taking their cases to trial because they have no incentive to accept a negotiated plea.

This depressing portrait of reasonable intentions and quick fixes gone awry should stand as a cautionary tale to Californians, who probably will be asked to vote on an initiative called the Crime Victims Justice Reform Act, currently being promoted as part of Sen. Pete Wilson’s gubernatorial campaign.

Aside from the danger it poses to abortion rights through its proposed abolition of the right to privacy enumerated in the state Constitution, the Wilson campaign’s proposal would saddle California’s court system with many of the problems that have created havoc on the federal level. If it were to pass and survive constitutional scrutiny, the state would have to increase spending on the courts dramatically or watch justice grind to a halt.