That’s good news for court officials who have worked nearly two years to reduce the backlog of felony cases clogging the county’s criminal justice system. They’re striving to ease congestion in the courts and save taxpayers potentially millions of dollars by transferring convicted felons to state prisons more quickly.

But the reason for the decrease is a source of debate, and the ultimate goal of reducing the population in the county jail has yet to be reached.

“I don’t want to take credit for a victory that hasn’t been achieved quite yet,” Superior Court Presiding Judge Bryan Chushcoff said last week. “I see that it may be getting a little bit better.”

Others take a more optimistic view. Mark Lindquist, the county’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor, contends the decrease in pending felony cases stems directly from a three-month focus on “special assault unit” cases, which are some of the slowest moving in the system.

Starting in mid-April, a group of four judges and a special team of deputy prosecutors targeted sex-crime and child-abuse cases. The project resolved more than 150 pending cases, mostly through expedited plea bargains, Lindquist said.

An equal number of cases was resolved in other trial units, dropping the overall backlog from about 2,150 cases on April 17 to 1,838 cases on Tuesday. That’s the smallest the backlog has been since June 2006, according to Superior Court records.

Court officials have said they’d like to get the number of pending cases below 1,500.

“We’ve always said when we get courtrooms we resolve cases,” said Lindquist, who championed the project. “Criminals are not in a big hurry to go to prison. They’re going to make the hard decision (to agree to a plea) when there’s a courtroom available for trial.”

The county’s performance audit coordinator, Matt Temmel, monitors the felony backlog for the County Council’s Performance Audit Committee.

“Based on the numbers after three months, the SAU backlog reduction project looks like a clear success,” Temmel said in a recent e-mail to The News Tribune.

County Council member Dick Muri, R-Steilacoom, has pressured court officials to reduce the number of pending felonies since a 2007 study by an independent auditor found inefficiencies in Superior Court that contributed to congestion in the system. More than 2,400 cases were pending in September 2007, an all-time high. Languishing cases are costly

Muri argues that shrinking the backlog is the only way to reduce the population of inmates in the jail and the costs incurred from housing them. He estimates languishing cases cost county taxpayers as much as $8 million a year in added jail costs.

“Either we get the backlog down, or we’re going to be putting all the money into corrections,” he said recently.

Muri, too, said he was pleased with the recent drop and credited the special-assault project.

Lindquist said he would like to expand the project to include robbery and assault cases by adding two more judges.

Chushcoff said he’s not ready to credit the drop in pending felonies to the special-assault project.

The judge pointed out that the number of new felony cases filed in Superior Court during May, June and July was below average, which may have contributed to the shrinking number of pending cases.

In July, for example, prosecutors filed 419 cases, nearly 100 below average.

“If I file a case in July, what are my chances of it being resolved in the same month?” he said. “Not very good. Those 100 cases would most likely still be in the system had they been filed.”

Lindquist countered that the number of special-assault cases resolved during the three-month project was nearly 200 above average.

“That’s not a function of reduced filings,” he said.

Chushcoff said he’d be reluctant to expand the project until he’s seen more data. Still, the judge said he’s pleased the overall numbers are down and that the project reduced the number of special-assault cases in the system.

There also has been a slight improvement in the speed in which newer cases are being resolved, Chushcoff said.

“I’m not discouraged,” he said. “I’m just not as encouraged as everybody else seems to be.”

The reduced backlog of felony cases has not translated to fewer inmates in the jail, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

“It appears there is another felon to take their spot,” Troyer said.

The average daily population for July was 1,287, he said, down just four inmates from April.

More than 81 percent of those incarcerated at the jail today are felons, Troyer added.

“We’re basically running a prison,” he said.

Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644
adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime

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