Judges Switch-Hit to Ease 3-Strikes Load

Several Orange County judges from civil court began presiding over criminal trials Monday in an effort to ease the backlog of cases stemming from the state’s three-strikes law.

Superior Court officials said they hope the weeklong pilot program will help relieve a backlog of 134 pending three-strikes trials.

“Some called it a strike-a-thon,” said Superior Court Judge Thomas N. Thrasher Sr., who supervises the civil caseload and is one of six judges involved in the project.

“The bottom line is the courts, both criminal and civil, have the resources available to try the three-strikes cases.”

By noon, Superior Court Judge David O. Carter assigned six three-strikes trials, which might otherwise have been postponed, to the judges in civil court, almost all of whom have handled criminal cases previously. Most of the trials had been pending more than a year, Carter said.

Tackling the backlog will ensure that Orange County, unlike other counties, will not be forced to close courtrooms that handle personal injury cases and other lawsuits to keep up with the three-strikes load, Carter said.

“There’s no reason to have the crisis,” said Carter, who supervises the court’s criminal panel.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard said officials would like to keep the pending three-strikes trial load at about 100 cases at any time.

“We haven’t impacted our civil side, and we have no intentions of letting our criminal caseload impact our civil side,” Millard said.

Under the three-strikes law, effective since March 1994, defendants face a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for any third felony conviction. The law, which also doubles the penalties for a second felony conviction if a defendant has one prior serious or violent conviction, has dramatically increased the number of jury trials statewide.

Officials will evaluate the pilot program’s effectiveness at the end of the week, but anticipate using it again this fall if the three-strikes caseload continues to rise.