With Funds Low, Alabama Courts Suspend Jury Trials

Jury selection in the infamous 1963 Birmingham church bombing was set to begin this week. A woman was finally going to get her day in court over a costly fender-bender. A health care company was set to contest its tax bill.

Those cases, and hundreds like them across the state, are now on hold because Alabama’s top judge--faced with a court system that is running out of money--has called a five-month moratorium on most jury trials.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy S. Moore hopes to make up the $2.7-million shortfall by saving the $10 (plus 5 cents per driving mile) that jurors are paid each day they serve.

With jury boxes empty since Monday, however, the ramifications of his decision are becoming obvious--even as officials seek another solution.

Inmates are beginning to file motions seeking speedy trials. Attorneys are talking about even more lawsuits.

And after 39 years, the world will have to continue waiting to find out if former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry planted the bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four young black girls dressed in their Sunday best.

Cherry, 72, would be the third man to be tried in the case--one of the seminal and most brutal events of the civil rights era.

“That old saying that justice delayed is justice denied--well, it’s overused, but it’s true,” said Jefferson County Deputy Circuit Court Clerk Earl Carter. “We’ll have jails backing up. We’ll have lawsuits. This is going to cause a lot of problems.”

Last fall, the courts asked the state Legislature for $124.7 million to cover annual operating costs. Lawmakers budgeted $122 million. Many jurists figured the difference would come through, eventually.

But with five months to go until the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30--and the extra $2.7 million nowhere in sight--Moore ordered the austerity measures.

He implemented a hiring freeze. He laid off 170 part-time employees. And he halted jury trials, criminal and civil.

Moore, a Republican known nationally for his efforts to have the Ten Commandments posted in public buildings, has feuded over court funding before with Democratic Gov. Donald Siegelman. Some have accused both of playing politics with justice--Moore trying to demonstrate what might happen without budget increases and Siegelman showing what might happen to those who openly goad the governor.

But the shortfall is real, residents have learned, and no one had come up with a better idea to solve the problem. Both men seemed to be enjoying the benefit of the doubt--until Tuesday.

That’s when Moore rejected the governor’s proposal to loan the courts a half-million dollars, to be repaid with uncollected fines. It wasn’t enough, Moore said. And besides, how could the loan be repaid with funds that the court had been unable to collect?

Moore said the governor instead should give the court system $1.2 million from an emergency fund to get things going. No dice, Siegelman said, noting that virtually every state agency was dealing with budget constraints.

Alabama’s top judges rank among the highest paid in the country, its mid-level judges in the middle--this in a state that came in 44th in average annual income in 2001, at $23,471.

This isn’t the first time Alabama trials have been endangered. In 1977, using the same Alabama law, and in a similar cost-cutting measure, then-Chief Justice C.C. “Bo” Torbert was on the verge of halting trials when the governor and Legislature came through with more money.

This is the first time in recent history, at least, that such drastic measures have actually been implemented, anywhere in the country, officials here said.

Some local authorities, realizing the problems a court lock-down would cause in this state of 4 million people, have decided to take action on their own.

The commissioners of Jefferson County--which includes Birmingham and is the state’s largest--voted last week to spend $272,000 to restart criminal jury trials May 6, even though those are state, not county, proceedings.

While the highest-ranking jurist in this state does battle with Alabama’s governor, the system stands to become the political pawn, many here say.

“The victims and the defendants are awaiting their day in court,” said Jerry Fielding, president of the Alabama Circuit Judge’s Assn. “You have to remember, that speedy trial issue is mentioned in the Constitution.”

At an annex to the Jefferson County Courthouse, attorneys on Tuesday filed motions and nonjury trials went on without a hitch. But jury boxes were empty throughout the gray, chilly building.

“It’s bizarre, really bizarre,” said a court clerk who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You’re going to have lawsuit after lawsuit. If this continues, it’s going to cause havoc.”