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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Judge DiFanis Asks Champaign County Board for Continuous Jury System," Jail "Construction" called "Inevitable" |
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by Kimberlie Kranich
Email: kakranich (nospam) yahoomail (unverified!) |
22 Jan 2006
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Champaign County Judge Thomas DiFanis and Court Administrator Roger Holland told a study session of the Champaign County Board last Thursday that their proposal to increase the availability of juries from 24 weeks to 48 weeks a year, called a "continuous jury system," would reduce the backlog of pending felony cases, the number of jailed inmates and the length of those inmates’ stay. They conclude, in a written report to the board, that their proposal would “better the justice system while simultaneously postponing an inevitable multi-million dollar expenditure in construction/renovation of current jail facilities.” |
The $97,000 a year proposal sounded good to board members who, in a straw poll vote, overwhelmingly agreed to send it to the finance committee. The finance committee is scheduled to meet Thursday, February 9th. About $35,000 of this annual proposed increase would cover the extra cost of having jury service 48 weeks a year. Jurors are paid $10 a day for their service plus mileage.
According to the Court’s report, “During 2005, the highest number of pending felony cases was in January when 856 cases were in pre-trial status.” Proposed changes to reduce that number are modeled after Will County’s continuous jury system.
“The continuous jury system has been operating in Will County for many years,” Judge Difanis told the board. “They have found it’s a way to move cases very quickly. They run jury trials 50 weeks out of the year, they have seven felony courtrooms continuously running jury trials and they average three felony jury trials a week. So, obviously it works. When attorneys and defendants realize that their case is really going to go to trial, everyone gets very serious. They start looking at it from the point of view, “’Is this something I really want to try, is this something I want to go to trial on, there’s been a plea offer, maybe I can take the plea at this point and avoid a jury trial.’”
Board member Pius Weibel asked, “I’m not quite sure why the Will County system you just talked about is faster than our present system. Could you explain the nuts and bolts of it?”
Judge DiFanis: “When individuals, and I’m talking about attorneys on both sides and the defendant, realize that this case is really going to go to trial, it’s not going to sit around for six or seven months, they have to make a decision. And in Will County they have found that most of the cases plead. They’re negotiated. The vast majority. We couldn’t begin to try all of the cases even with a manageable level, so it gets people to make a decision that much quicker because the juries are available literally every day.”
Champaign County state’s attorney Julia Rietz also attended the board meeting and supports the proposal.
“I don’t want us to come away from this with the idea that we’re in some kind of crisis and that we have a huge backlog of cases that are sitting and sitting and sitting,” Ms. Rietz said. “But we do have a problem with our current system in that we have two weeks of jury term and we want to set as many cases as we can because, as Judge DiFanis said, when a case is called to trial that’s a decision point for our attorneys, for the defendant, for the defense attorneys. ‘Do we have the evidence? Do they really want to roll the dice and take that risk at a jury trial?’”
Mr. Weibel asked, “Are you concerned that some cases may be rushed into going to trial because you have possibly a little less time to work on them?”
“Well, my philosophy is that we shouldn’t charge a case if we don’t think we can prove it,” Ms. Rietz replied. “What I’ve tried to do over the past year is slow things down a little bit and not be rushed into charging a case. And with felony cases, I have a three year statute of limitations so if I don’t have the evidence, we don’t charge the case at the beginning. So I would like to say that no, that shouldn’t be a problem. We can make motions to continue.”
Judge DiFanis told the board: “One of the things we instituted a couple of months ago was an order that people in custody on a garden variety felony that doesn’t require any kind of forensic evidence need to be tried within 60 days. Hopefully that will move some of our population that much quicker.”
In addition to juries being available 48 weeks a year instead of the current 24 weeks a year, jury duty would be one week instead of the current two weeks.
Mr. Weibel noted: “Your report states that Will County changed to the one-week jury service 50 weeks out of the year about 10 years ago. Did they have a higher back log of cases at the time and do you know what the numbers were as far as reduction after they went to the new system?”
Judge DiFanis said: “I don’t know that they actually achieved a reduction, I know that they’re breaking even. Will County’s population has expanded tremendously. They’ve added 100,000 in the past several years. Their jail is woefully overcrowded. I think they’re just trying to break even. They’re trying to not add to the population but again in looking at how their cases are resolved, if you take a county that size with seven felony courtrooms and you’re only trying three felonies a week, that means you are disposing of almost all of the cases without trial.”
It was unclear to this reporter where the inmates who were disposed of from the Champaign County jails would move to. No members of the public attended the Thursday meeting and no board members raised this question.
The proposal also calls for the hiring of an assistant public defender. An assistant public defender would account for $46,951 of the proposed $97,000 annual increase to the budget.
Public defenders in Champaign County represent approximately 75% of all people accused of criminal offenses, according to the report, and in 2005 each public defender averaged 472 felony cases and/or 839 misdemeanor cases. The American Bar Association established that an appropriate standard for public defender caseloads would be 150 felony cases per year or 400 misdemeanor cases per year, the report said.
“I shouldn’t have been shocked to realize that we should be having three times the public defenders if we’re going to comply with American Bar Association standard,” Board member Jennifer Putman said. “So I certainly would support the addition of a public defender or two, perhaps, or three.”
Ms. Rietz said: “We support the addition of an assistant public defender in order to help with this system. We’ve figured out how we could do it within our current personnel budget. And if the board is going to consider more than one assistant public defender, that is going to make our job difficult because we have to work largely with the public defender’s office. At this point, I’m not asking for more staff, that might be something we would need to come back to later, depending on how things go, but I believe within my current staffing and budget, we could handle this change in the system and it would be an improvement for the overall system.”
The proposal before the County Board also promises that a continuous jury system would increase the attendance of summoned jurors, increase jury service opportunities for minorities and decrease the burden of service.
“We think that (a continuous jury system) would improve our participation,” Judge DiFanis said. “We need to get better participation in our juries. We send out several hundred summonses in the course of bringing in a jury and our return rate is probably 25 percent.”
According to the Judge’s report, “those failing to appear are not subsequently contacted by the Court unless the Court fails to have available a sufficient number of jurors. This is a rare occurrence in petit juries, but does occur occasionally in grand jury settings.”
The actual number of times in which there are not enough jurors for trials was not listed in the report.
One proposed way to increase the number of citizens who show up for jury duty, according to the report, is to send out questionnaires.
“The way it works now, we have a computer screening system,” Mr. Holland told the board. “We get a large block of data from the state which includes data from driver’s licenses and registered voters. Those are put into the computer system and 500 of those at random are drawn every month. What would happen in this case, and a few times during the year, is we would take a much larger number and send them all a letter asking them basic questions about their ability to serve including with that an envelope to send that information back to us. That information is then scanned into the system so that we then know that this address is correct. The ones that don’t come back or come back not served we then know that they’re not available.”
Board member Deb Feinen said, “I didn’t quite understand how the pre-screening would work. My concern is I get a letter in the mail that says Hey, tell us this is the correct address so we can summons you for juries and I toss it in the garbage and think, I’m not telling them!” So, can you explain to me how that’s going to work? “
Mr. Holland replied, “Well there’s nothing that would ever prevent someone who really doesn’t want to serve from not serving other than direct enforcement. It’s basically trying to improve our accuracy not necessarily hitting our bull’s eye every single time. Sending out this information is basically just a way for us to see if they’re out there.”
The proposed juror questionnaire was not made available to the board or the public at Thursday’s meeting.
“I’m pretty excited about the proposed changes and I do think the change may make serving on jury duty more appealing – the week time- but I think it will make it more appealing to everybody. I don’t think you can say that you’ll be increasing the jury service opportunities for minorities because you’ll be increasing it just as much for whites,” Board member Nancy Greenwalt said. “I just think that’s overreaching to say that is something that will be accomplished.”
Board member Steve Beckett, who is also a professor in the College of Law at the University of Illinois and has studied juror populations said, “One of the things we discovered in talking with the circuit clerk was that the secretary of state’s office could send the computer information more frequently. If you get the information once a year, then you have all of the transitional moves that occur in our community. People leave school. People come to school. People change jobs. People just move. If you get the secretary of state’s data twice a year, then you’ve cut into some of that transitional problem.”
Mr. Beckett also commented on factors outside of the County Board’s control that help to increase number of people incarcerated.
“The legislature is creating mandatory minimums all the time, more offenses and creating new offenses so the concern that I have is the volume of cases will continue to rise even if our population doesn’t increase dramatically. We add more law enforcement. I’ve never heard a cop yet that said, ‘I had a good day, I didn’t make any arrests.’ They’re out there looking trying to solve crime. And so that means the pressure on the system is going to continue to increase and ultimately what that means is we are managing our jail population number very well but a year from now, will we? Two years from now, will we? Well, we’ve got a decaying, dying building and we can either sit back and say we spent this $97,000 and everything is OK and we can just ignore it or we can do some long range planning and say how are we going to solve this problem? I can’t think of a county in this state that would say, Great. We have two correctional campuses. This is wonderful. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
State’s attorney Julia Rietz agreed. “We continue to have a growing need in our community and the state as a whole. Just this year new laws go into effect that make it a felony driving under the influence of alcohol with no insurance or no driver’s license. That’s now a felony. That means when you get arrested for that, you cannot post bond. You have to be held in our jail at least over night and possible longer depending on what bond the court sets. That’s going to increase our population not inappropriately. But those changes it the law will effect our jail population. And our jail issue is as much a facilities issue as it is a philosophical issue or a system issue. We’re doing the best that we can within the justice system to move our cases and keep our population down but I would hate to see this come to an emergency situation where we have to board people out because we said, ‘Oh, we’re doing OK now, we won’t plan for the future’.”
Ms. Feinen asked, “Did you explore other options as well? One question is creating a mental health court that would be similar to our drug court that would help to streamline our system and take some of the people out of our current system and perhaps send them into treatment as opposed to sending them into our jail system and maybe help speeding cases through that way. Was that considered?”
Judge DiFanis replied that while he has considered a mental health court, “I don’t think a mental health court would carve out that many people. It would be difficult to determine who would qualify. At this point and time we need to concentrate on continuous juries.”
According to Champaign County Sheriff Dan Walsh, who also presented at the meeting, “In the long run, I do think we need to look at whether or not we need to add cell space. Not just replacement, but add more. Now I know some of you out there feel, if we add them, they will fill them. That could happen. I hope not. Piatt County built a 40 person jail, it averages less than 20 and it’s been that way for two years.”
Champaign County has two operating jails, both are in Urbana. The downtown jail, built in 1980, has 131 housing beds and the satellite jail, built in 1996, has 153 housing beds. With 29 overflow beds at the satellite facility, there are a total of 313 available beds for housing inmates. According to Mr. Holland, the average jail population was 228 inmates in December.
The next County Board meeting is 7pm Thursday at the Brookens Administrative Center in Urbana. |
This work is in the public domain. |
Comments
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Re: Judge DiFanis Asks Champaign County Board for Continuous Jury System," Jail "Construction" called "Inevitable" |
by John Hilty
jhilty (nospam) shout.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
24 Jan 2006
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This is a well-written article. Thank-you for keeping us updated about this. |
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Re: Judge DiFanis Asks Champaign County Board for Continuous Jury System," Jail "Construction" called "Inevitable" |
by Local Yocal
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Mar 2006
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In response to Judge Difanis' comment that a mental health court "would not carve out that many people" and "it would be difficult to determine who would qualify":
The problem is that all mental health referrals in our criminal courts go to one man, Dr. Lawrence Jeckel. Dr. Jeckel rarely considers criminal behavior a symptom of a mental illness. Unless a defendant is adament that spacemen or voices told them to do a specific act, Jeckel considers criminal behavior a character flaw and not part of a mental condition. His opinion will be different, of course, if the defendant is middle class and has a highly -paid attorney seeking a favorable review for their client from Dr. Jeckel. Then Dr. Jeckel, like he did in the Dr. Fineberg case (she stabbed her two children at her suburban home in Cherry Hills), will render a mental condition as a cause for criminal behavior. The poor and indigent are no longer considered elgible for such leniencies. Once again, justice requires money.
It is worthwhile to note that Sherriff Walsh complains his county jail is filled with many inmates with mental health problems and that is why there exists a contract with Champaign County Mental Health for counselors. This was his defense to the jail suicide scourge of '04. From a December 8, 2004 article in the News-Gazette, we read:
"About 40 of the 280 or so current jail inmates are on "watch" for medical, mental health or suicide issues, Walsh said. "
Despite the contradictions, the Champaign County law enforcement community tends to see crime as strictly character issues; and poverty, chemical addiction, and mental illness have little to do with why a person commits a crime. Crime, according to the legal elite of Champaign County, is the result of an irresponsible person, until the defendant is one of their friends or a U of I student; then the excuses and accomodations are rolled out like red carpets. |
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