Judges’ Plan Cuts Courts’ Backlog

In the face of an avalanche of three-strikes filings, judges at the downtown Criminal Courts Building have implemented a speedy-trial plan that has done the seemingly impossible--sharply cut an immense backlog of cases.

Even though more cases than ever are going to trial because of the state’s three-strikes law, the number of total cases pending as of July 31 in the county’s downtown courts has reached a 20-year low, according to court statistics released Wednesday.

The speedy-trial plan, implemented March 18, also has produced a significant cut in the backlog of “old” cases--those pending for four or more months. And it has eased the burden on the civil courthouse downtown, which handles the overflow from the Criminal Courts Building.

The program that produced these results is a deceptively simple one. Criminal cases in Superior Court either go to trial within the 60-day period mandated by state law, or they are dismissed.

Before, cases used to be continued routinely, often for weeks or months. James Bascue, the supervising judge of the criminal courts, said Wednesday, “We’re doing a hell of a lot better than we did before.”

So much better, he said, that the plan probably will be implemented countywide by early next year.

Bascue, the driving force behind the plan, launched the pilot project at the downtown courthouse after analyses and reports by various committees and blue-ribbon panels confirmed the obvious: The three-strikes law was threatening to overwhelm the county’s criminal justice system.

In the first two years the three-strikes law was in operation, from March 1994 through February 1996, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office filed 4,854 three-strikes cases and an additional 11,784 second-strike cases.

The three-strikes law calls for a sentence of 25 years to life for anyone convicted of a third felony if the first two were violent or serious. It also doubles the usual sentence for a second strike.

Because the law mandates such lengthy prison terms, more defendants are choosing to take their chances with a jury in second- and three-strike cases. About 25% of all strikes cases go to trial while only 5% of non-strikes cases go to trial. The remainder end in plea bargains.

Trials tie up courtrooms for days or weeks. And even without the three-strikes law, the courts face an extraordinary load--since the district attorney’s office has filed an average 70,000 felonies and 250,000 misdemeanors annually for the past few years. Those figures do not account for Juvenile Court cases.

“When we started looking at these numbers, they were absolutely frightening and scary,” Bascue said. “Every number we looked at showed a justice system in crisis.”

Under state law, all criminal cases in Superior Court must go to trial by the 60th day after a defendant is first arraigned, meaning formally charged with a crime. Beginning March 18, Bascue ordered that the law was to be strictly followed at the county’s downtown courts and continuances granted only for “hard and fast” reasons.

From March 18 through July 31, 351 cases went to jury trial in the downtown courts. That was up 22% from the 288 jury trials for the same period in 1995.

The total number of cases still pending on July 31 fell 17% from March 18, from 2,698 to 2,233.

The number of “old” cases, those pending more than 120 days, fell 36%, from 1,193 to 760.

The backlog of pending cases at the county’s downtown courts is now the lowest it has been in the 20 years the Superior Court has been measuring that number, said Ed Brekke, a county administrator who tracks court statistics.

From March 18 through July 31, the civil courthouse handled 205 overflow criminal trials, most of them strikes cases. During the same period in 1995, it handled 260, 27% more.

Bascue called that a “major, major win for the civil justice system.”