By SEAN O'SULLIVAN - Staff reporter
February 16 News Journal

In Wilmington court, wheels of justice will turn fast Delaware Superior Court judges in Wilmington have scheduled a blitz of criminal cases that should ease prison overcrowding and prepare for a courthouse move. More than 400 cases have been set for trial over four weeks - six times the monthly average during the year ending June 30.Superior Court Judge Richard S. Gebelein said judges want to speed the time it takes for incarcerated defendants to get to trial and ease the court calendar before the move to a new courthouse in August.
Court officials also hope the push started this week will help reduce overcrowding from inmates awaiting trial at Gander Hill prison, in Wilmington. The prison held 1,750 inmates Friday, including 56 housed in overflow space in the gymnasium. The prison was designed for 867 inmates.
Judges, attorneys and legal experts said the blitz would strain the court system, though they disagreed over to what extent. Caseloads for judges and lawyers will rise, far more jurors will be called daily and court workers will be pulled from their normal duties.
Some of the 18 to 20 state prosecutors working in the court have been scheduled for up to 10 cases a day, up from an average of two to four a week.
"It is going to be ugly," said Peter N. Letang, chief prosecutor for New Castle County. Prosecutors will be under pressure to reach plea deals but will not be rushed into softening their stance, he said.
Some defense attorneys said the blitz would be good for defendants because prosecutors might offer their clients better deals to settle the case and move on to others.
But defense attorney Eugene Mauer said he worries the blitz might overload some attorneys, particularly public defenders. "I just hope quality is not lost to expedience," he said.
Public Defender Brendan O'Neill said his office has been preparing for months. Caseloads for the 14 public defenders have gone from one or two trials scheduled in a week to five in a day.
"The biggest difficulty as defenders is preparing more than one case and not knowing which one is going to go," he said.
Judges and lawyers also will have to be mindful that rushing a case could provide the grounds for an appeal, Letang said. "That threat is out there," he said.
Judges set the time for the blitz in November, though not all attorneys were notified then.
State prosecutor Steven P. Wood said prosecutors were told about the blitz in December, but most did not get a case schedule until two weeks ago.
The court will handle criminal cases involving defendants who were incarcerated on or before Nov. 30, 2001.
Gebelein, who helped plan the blitz, said he thought it would be a greater strain on nerves than justice.
Court officials said they also hope the accelerated schedule will help them learn why cases are slow to come to trial.
Extraordinary measures To get more inmates to trial, court officials said they are taking steps that could not be done year-round.
The court is doubling the number of days it will start criminal cases and will set aside seven of nine courtrooms for the cases. Judges from Kent and Sussex counties could be brought in to help. Civil cases might be suspended or limited for the duration.
Court officials will bring in 300 people a day for jury duty. Normally, 40 to 130 jurors are summoned for criminal cases.
The Delaware Department of Correction will add five to six guards to transportation duties and the court will pull some people from office duties for courtroom work.
Gebelein said it would be physically impossible to try all 400 cases in four weeks, so judges expect many to be resolved short of trial.
University of Delaware criminal justice professor Valerie Hans said pressure for prosecutors and defense attorneys to resolve a large number of cases quickly is not much different from an average day.
"I think this is more of the same," she said. "I don't see a danger."
Ninety-three percent to 94 percent of all cases are resolved through pleas, Hans said.
Of the more than 5,000 criminal cases filed in the Delaware Superior Court last year, only 111 went to trial, Superior Court Administrator Art Bernardino said.
While the court is placing a premium on getting cases resolved, Gebelein said, some cases might end up being delayed for good reasons, such as waiting for lab results.
And he said there is a fail-safe in the system.
"Obviously each of the individuals going to trial has an attorney and they will be raising issues," he said.
If a significant number of attorneys refuse to settle and demand to go to trial - tying up courtrooms, judges, staff and attorneys - the blitz will slow to a crawl, attorneys said.
Speedy trials? Hardly
Resolving court cases quickly has long been a problem in Delaware, a state Supreme Court committee study discovered in November 2000. The report found the court system had failed to meet its own speedy trial standards for 10 years. At that time, the average wait for a defendant was 170 days before a judge or jury ruled on the charges.
Unlike some other states, Delaware has no "speedy trial" laws requiring a case be brought to a judge within a certain period. The state's guideline calls for a defendant to be tried within 120 days.
In some cases, poor inmates who cannot post bail wait months in prison and later are cleared of criminal charges. Some of those inmates are held longer waiting for trial than the maximum sentence for the charges they face.
No one knows exactly how often that happens because no one tracks those cases, Delaware Supreme Court Justice Joseph T. Walsh said in an interview a year ago.
A Delaware Supreme Court report found that in the year ending June 30, 2000, one in five prison beds was taken by a defendant who could not post bail.
Getting cases to trial more quickly would be good for victims, too, said Susan Howley, director of public policy for National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington.
Deborah Ann McNesby, director of case scheduling, said the blitz would help court officials find out why some cases take so long to get to trial. Judges will have both attorneys in front of them and can ask, "Why can't this case go today?"
Reach Sean O'Sullivan at 324-2777 or at sosullivan@delawareonline.com.