Panel Seeks Solution to Crowded Courts

County supervisors created a five-member task force Tuesday to help determine whether the addition of night courts and the use of shared courtrooms can ease crowding in Municipal and Superior courts.

However, judges from those courts who have been campaigning for more courtrooms and judges questioned the need for another study group.

The county-appointed task force “doesn’t do much of anything for me,” said E. Mac Amos Jr., the presiding judge of the San Diego Municipal Court. “Our first priority is to find some money for a new courthouse. We’ve got enough committees, but we don’t have any money to build a new courthouse, and, without that, we’re spinning our wheels.”

Judith McConnell, presiding judge of the San Diego Superior Court, said the task force could be a waste of time unless it includes judges, attorneys, public defenders, the Sheriff’s Department, the county marshal’s office and probation officials.

“When you’re looking into the court space issue, you need people who are qualified to make an assessment of what the needs are,” McConnell said, adding that the courts will provide any information the task force wants.

“I hope they will talk to all of the key players.”

County Supervisor Susan Golding wants the task force to consist largely of San Diegans who are not directly involved in the justice system.

No date was set to pick the panel.

Some court observers believe that night court and shared courtrooms will help judges and courthouse staff cope with a wave of court actions that threatens to swamp the court systems.

No Superior Court judges are now assigned to night courts.

The Municipal Court, although conducting no jury trials, operates two small-claims courts weekday nights. A Thursday night traffic court might be expanded to the other four weekday nights, Amos said. And, two Municipal Court judges already share a courtroom.

“We’re utilizing our courts in the most efficient way possible,” Amos said.

Amos cautioned that more night courts could increase operating costs for the already strapped legal system.

For trials that involve defendants who are incarcerated “you have the cost of transportation, which the sheriff has to operate . . . the marshal’s costs for security . . . the clerks who have to be paid, as well as the judges,” Amos said.

Supervisor Susan Golding, who had pushed the board to form a committee that would include representatives from a wide spectrum of the community, agreed to a smaller task force after George Bailey complained that the county was being “committeed to death.”