Judges Acquire ‘Shopping-Cart’ Mind Set : Justice: Much time and effort is wasted in San Diego County’s seemingly unending game of musical courtrooms.

All of us can put up with almost anything for a short period. But even the most minor inconvenience, if persistent and unremovable, soon becomes a burden.

Picture then, being a judge who has no courtroom or chambers dedicated to your needs.

The clerk and support staff are constantly moving records, files, paper supplies, books and evidence--including narcotics, weapons and money. These materials are left overnight in areas of little or questionable security. The judge must literally develop a “shopping-cart” mentality.

Certain essential items, such as the California statutes, codes and rules of procedures, are placed in boxes and kept there. Non-essential items like a law dictionary, although necessary to a professional product, are left behind. Personal property is sometimes lost in the shuffle.

Legal research materials are not readily available and personal files are not kept up to date. Nonetheless, the judge must still make sound decisions and legal judgments.

Significant amounts of that priceless thing called time are lost every day. A judge’s trial time can be reduced from 6 1/2 hours to 4 hours a day. Inconvenience to witnesses, parties and jurors is a constant reality.

And of great and lasting importance, the dignity of the court process--so essential to the maintenance of respect for the law--is in danger of being lost.

As many as six judges at a time have played this game of musical courtrooms during the past year. Some short-term relief will be provided by nine temporary courtrooms scheduled to be constructed in the El Cortez Hotel.

But the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has created a task force to study greater use of shared courtrooms and night court as ways of stretching scarce resources and easing crowding.

The current shared-courtroom concept simply cannot work in this region with its heavy caseload. It would only result in increased costs, decreased efficiency (caused in part by the time spent in setting up and breaking down courtrooms), and most disturbingly, it would not serve the cause of justice.

The frequent moves are particularly difficult on jurors, who already are in unfamiliar circumstances and often apprehensive. In one recent case, the jury was picked in one courtroom, opening statements were in another and evidence was in a third. All in two days. In another case, the jury was moved four times during deliberations.

The jurors’ attention is diverted from the case they are hearing to concern over where they are to be after the next recess. This cannot help but detract from the quality of their decisions.

In almost any organization, the newest employee is given a desk to call his or her own. Yet experienced, successful attorneys, rewarded with the honor of appointment to the bench, are not even provided with the most elementary tools of their trade. And veteran judges with permanent courtrooms and chambers, have lost their privacy also. Every time a judge is gone, even if only for a day, another judge and staff will occupy his or her space, disturbing files and private papers.

No group of employees, whatever their level, should have to tolerate this.

These unfortunate experiences were forced upon the courts by poor planning years ago. And still, little progress has been made in addressing the problem. The continuing failure to build courtrooms--in the face of realistic and well understood predictions of population growth--is a formula for disaster.

There is no justification for this situation. Justice is being forced to take a back seat to the political rhetoric that the county should not build courts it cannot afford to operate. Enough is enough.

This commentary was compiled from memos requested by Superior Court Presiding Judge Judith McConnell from former Superior Court Judge Louis E. Boyle; Judge Lisa Guy-Schall, who was a “shopping cart” judge for five months , and Judge Harrison Hollywood, who recently moved into a courtroom in the San Diego Hotel.