Managing Court Cases

To manage or not to manage.

That was the question this week as the Hon. William F. Dressel, president of the National Judicial College, and court management guru Barry Mahoney co-lead sessions in Atlanta on case management for judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and clerks.

Fulton County's Superior Court organized the three-day seminar. Buoyed by the success of a strict case management routine that has cut disposition of almost all nonviolent drug and property felony cases to just nine weeks, court leaders are poised to expand efficient case management to all cases - criminal and civil.

Poised, but not yet diving in.

A little background may help set the scene for what played out in the meeting room at the top of the high-rise James H. "Sloppy" Floyd state government building which towers over the gold-domed Georgia Capitol.

Georgia has a non-unified court system. Each of the state's 159 counties elects its own judges, district attorneys and clerk of court. Each court operates independently, although loosely bound by the Administrative Office of Courts, which functions mostly as a pass-through for funding.

Each of Georgia's Superior Courts is comprised of from two to 20 autonomous judges who also operate as they see fit. Having a single method of managing cases is still more a dream than a routine, even in the largest Superior Court in Fulton County.

That makes just getting all members of the Fulton judicial community into that room a big step.

But our court has been taking steps toward the management ideal espoused by Judge Dressel and Mahoney, who heads the Denver-based Justice Management Institute.

In 2006, the court began assigning all single defendant, nonviolent felony cases to a single judge with the same prosecutor and defense lawyer carrying the cases through from arrest to disposition.

This so-called FastTrackFelony calendar has a mandated timetable for each stage of a case.

As a result, the total pending felony caseload in the Superior Court of Fulton County was reduced by 44 percent from the inception of the FastTrackFelony Calendar in May of 2006 through May of 2009.

That is a reduction of some 3,500 pending felony cases from more than 8,000 to some 4,500. FastTrackFelony cases – primarily single-defendant, non-violent property and drug cases – account for more than 60 percent of all felony cases before the Court.

This dramatic reduction is the result of dedication and hard day-to-day work by judges and employees of the Court, and staff of the Fulton County District Attorney, Fulton Superior Court Clerk and Fulton Public Defender. It also proves that case management works!

Here's how.

All FastTrackFelony court defendants are interviewed and assessed for court-appointed counsel at the Fulton County Jail where they are scheduled for a first appearance hearing within 24 to 48 hours of arrest.

After First Appearance hearings, all FastTrackFelony cases are assigned to cases managers. The case assignments are vertical, meaning that the assigned case managers follow their cases from accusation or indictment through final disposition.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers also follow the same case through all stages of the calendar. Vertical assignment is a key to keeping cases on track for disposition.

An All Purpose Hearing operated by the Court’s Magistrates, also helps keep cases on track by enforcing time standards prior to indictment or accusation. After defendants have appeared in court for Plea and Arraignment hearings, the final stage is trial.

Cases not resolved by pleas are immediately calendared for trial. Less than .007 percent of all FastTrackFelony cases actually go to trial.

The ability of our court to conclude these within only 9 weeks of arrest benefits the justice system in a number of ways:

· There has been a huge reduction in bond forfeitures in these cases due to timely processing.

· FastTrackFelony defendants almost never have multiple cases pending before the first case is ever reached for disposition.

· It has enabled us to divert the drug addicted and the mentally ill for treatment more efficiently.

· It has dramatically reduced the need for inmate transport to the courts complex since plea and arraignment hearings in these cases are heard at the jail.

Being Georgia's largest court has driven much of the change.

Since 2002, Fulton Superior Court’s caseload has increased 27 percent and it expected to exceed 38,100 cases by year’s end. Because of our location, Fulton County's Superior Court not only serves the judicial needs of the county's approximately 980,000 residents, but also hears all lawsuits filed against Georgia’s state government and many of the large corporations headquartered in Atlanta.

While we have made strides in streamlining the processing of FastTrackFelony cases we still face a serious problem of backlog cases. The court won a grant to fund a one-year project to reduce the number of cases over a year old, but our court's leaders believe that without reworking how we process and manage cases the backlog will return.

That brings us back to the reason for the gathering at the Top of the Slop as the site of this week's meeting is known.

Whether some or all of the recommendations outlined by Dressel and Mahoney this week are put into action remains to be seen.

But the presence of so many of our judges, their law clerks and case managers, the elected district attorney and key members of his staff, the public defender and his assistants and top officials and managers of the Clerk's office indicates we may be about to take the plunge.

More later.