Thurston County leasing, renovating space to chip away at COVID-19 jury trial backlog
Today, an office building on the 2400 block of Chandler Court Southwest is a construction zone, complete with open trenches and exposed wall studs. But in a little over a month, if all goes according to plan, it’ll play host to Thurston County courts.
The county commission last month approved a two-year lease of the space, about a half-mile from the county courthouse complex. Its lease costs $468,000 for the first year with a 3 percent increase the next.
It plans to cover initial costs — renovation, furniture, equipment — with federal Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) money. But ongoing costs — rent after a couple months, security, staffing — will come out of the county’s general fund, according to public discussion, and are most recently estimated at a little over $1 million per year.
County officials agree that the cost to expand the courts’ space is justified, so they can safely administer justice during a pandemic. By allowing more jury trials to proceed with public health precautions in place, they aim to chip away at a mounting backlog.
The unique challenge of pandemic jury trials
Local court operations already look much different than they did before the pandemic, as court officials try to balance public health with maintaining access to justice in courthouses not built with social distancing in mind.
Long before the pandemic, officials were raising concerns over cramped quarters and the way the buildings are configured.
“It’s really pretty simple: So long as we need to be 6 feet apart from one another, we have serious problems administering justice in our courthouses,” Presiding Superior Court Judge Erik Price said in a video interview with The Olympian this week.
The superior and district courts drastically changed operations in mid-March, in part delaying all jury trials.
Other changes in Superior Court have included reorganizing how it handles essential criminal hearings that typically involve a lot of defendants at once, Judge Price said. One example: Judges usually handle multiple cases at one time for defendants coming to court to change their pleas. Now, they handle them one at a time, which also slows things down.
The superior court never shut its doors to the public, though hours were limited earlier in the pandemic.
District Court initially closed down with the exception of hearings that were already remote. The public has not been allowed back into the courthouse, physically, but the court has been streaming hearings live on YouTube and allows people to attend court in person if they don’t have access to necessary technology.
The philosophy, presiding District Court Judge Brett Buckley said, has been that the court knows its obligations, but isn’t going to do anything that would “run the risk of exacerbating” the current public health situation.
The superior and district courts each have a detailed response plan that includes a long list of public health-conscious actions, including policies for enhanced cleaning, face coverings, and maintaining space.
Even among the many processes the courts have tailored to the pandemic, jury trials present unique challenges.
There’s jury selection, when the presiding judges say District Court typically brings in about 20 people and Superior Court may bring in up to 90 to 120 potential jurors. Even in the new space, Buckley said District Court plans to conduct jury selection virtually.
Then there’s the human element. Jurors are tasked with determining someone’s guilt or innocence. That includes evaluating the credibility of witnesses, both presiding judges said — something they have serious doubts can happen in remote proceedings.
Art Starry, environmental health division director at Thurston County Public Health and Social Services, told The Olympian that staff under his department’s supervision have been consulting with businesses and residents to help them interpret COVID-19 guidance, and they were contacted by the courts.
They reviewed the courts’ plans and determined they were appropriate, Starry said. Reading from a staff report, Starry said the courts “have the procedures and space to do so (hold jury trials) in a safe fashion, but the capacity to hold trials is limited and additional time will be needed for each trial.”
The only way it could work in District Court, Judge Buckley said, is if the court were to use two of its three courtrooms: One for proceedings and one for jurors to deliberate.
Using two of three courtrooms for one jury trial doesn’t meet the court’s needs, Buckley said, given the volume of cases it handles and the need to make the court available to those without access to technology.
“We’re already dealing with a backlog and that would just increase it,” District Court Administrator Jennifer Creighton said.
District Court hasn’t conducted a jury trial since March. Superior Court briefly relaunched jury trials in early July, but all the cases approved for trial resolved through pleas or dismissals, according to court officials. Then the county saw a spike in COVID-19 cases, and jury trials were again suspended.
The court was ready to begin again Aug. 31, according to Superior Court Administrator Pam Hartman Beyer, but the first went forward within the last couple weeks. The court typically conducts three or four trials at once, Price and others have said, but can now conduct just one.
That one took a lot of shuffling in order to accommodate COVID-19 precautions. The biggest courtroom hosted waves of jury selection and the eventual court proceedings, jurors were split across three deliberation rooms for breaks, and another courtroom hosted the full jury when it was time for deliberations.
County Prosecutor Jon Tunheim wrote in an email to The Olympian that the arrangement isn’t big enough for major trials.
“A much larger courtroom is necessary to adequately conduct a more complex trial (such as a murder case or sexual assault case) where we often need a larger jury and routinely use display technology for evidence presentation,” Tunheim wrote. “Without that space, those cases are unable to proceed and the case simply stalls, oftentimes with a defendant who is being held in jail pending trial.”
The new space should allow for District Court to start conducting one trial at a time and Superior Court to conduct an additional trial, according to officials.
Even adding that capacity expands Superior Court’s capacity by 100 percent, Judge Price pointed out. Some trials can last a month, he said — without the extra space, that’s one trial in a month. The ability to conduct multiple trials in a second space in the meantime makes a big difference.
How big are the backlogs?
Using a rule of thumb that about 5 percent of cases at pretrial go to a jury, District Court Administrator Creighton wrote in an email to The Olympian that the court estimates 95 trials of the 1,900 cases in the court’s pretrial backlog are “waiting for the new court space.”
She also pointed out an economic cost: About 40 of those people are in custody solely for District Court trials, with an additional 20 who face District Court charges and are in custody due to charges from Superior Court. It costs the county approximately $120 a day to house them, she wrote.
Superior Court Administrator Hartman Beyer wrote in an email that, according to a report generated from the jail, it appeared there were 204 defendants in custody who hadn’t been sentenced on Superior Court cases as of Friday.
The superior court has 972 active pretrial cases, Hartman Beyer told The Olympian, not including cases on appeal, on warrant status, on discretionary review, stayed because of an appeal, or on continued prosecution. In early 2020, she said that number was about 500, meaning the caseload has doubled over the last several months.
“It’s exploded on us,” she said.
Between 2019 and 2020 combined, there are also 422 pending cases for which warrants have been issued after defendants didn’t show up to court, she said.
As of March 1, the countdown clock for defendants to have a speedy trial was essentially suspended by the state Supreme Court, according to Hartman Beyer, which contributed to that backlog. As of Friday, the clock is slated to restart Oct. 15.
In addition to all those cases, Prosecutor Tunheim estimates his office has an evolving backlog of between 200 and 300 felony and 400 and 500 misdemeanor cases that are still pending review for charges.
Those have built up for a couple reasons: law enforcement stopped making arrests for most non-violent crimes during COVID-19 and referred cases to his office instead, he wrote in an email. And the court restricted hearings to only in-custody cases early on, preventing his office from filing new cases for people who weren’t in jail.
What the backlogs translate to for individuals is “justice delayed,” says Patrick O’Connor, director of Thurston County Public Defense — an inability to exercise their constitutional right to a speedy and public trial. Prosecutors might also say it’s justice delayed for witnesses, he said.
Having firm jury trials is important for more than just the trial itself, both O’Connor and Prosecutor Tunheim said. The finality of an impending trial can apply pressure to cases that then resolve through dismissal or negotiated settlements.
Concerns remain over who will feel comfortable serving on juries during the pandemic — or who will even be able to, with working parents also currently guiding children through remote learning.
“On behalf of our clients, we need our community to serve...and be a part of the justice system in ensuring that all individuals in our community are represented in our jury pools,” O’Connor said.
A tight timeline for renovation
Chris Helmer, capital project manager for the county’s Central Services, told The Olympian that, through Kidder Mathews, the county started with a list of roughly 20 properties before narrowing it down to a shortlist and choosing the Chandler Court site. It was the top pick because it’s close to the courthouse, modern enough that it can be reconfigured, and stakeholders from the courts preferred it, he said.
It was tough to get a commercial lease for anything shorter than 5 years, Helmer said.
Crews have about a month remaining to transform what were once state agencies’ offices. At play are operational functions of the courts, inmate safety and movement, and public safety and movement, all in the framework of a pandemic that puts a 6-foot bubble around each individual.
Crews are re-configuring walls to accommodate social distancing, and adding holding cells, restrooms, and required technology infrastructure and equipment.
Startup cost estimates are $650,000 for tenant improvements, $100,000 for security improvements, $100,000 for furniture and fixtures, $50,000 for equipment, and $10,000 for moving costs.
On a guided tour this week, The Olympian saw a preview of what the public might expect: Much of the ground floor now consists of two cavernous, open rooms, while offices for court administration, judges, and ad hoc meetings are planned for the second level.
The city of Olympia has been quickly permitting necessary changes, according to Helmer. But the construction isn’t without obstacles.
There are supply-chain problems, according to Helmer. With so much federal money funneling to local governments working on tight deadlines to spend it, Helmer said they’re struggling to keep up with the demand for tech equipment, toilets, and other supplies.
“Which is good, for the economy and other things, but it’s tough on the guys trying to get the thing in the place at the right time,” Helmer said.
The tight turnaround partly stems from the money being used to fund the project.
The county’s federal CRF money has been funneled through at least three state agencies, which have varying deadlines for spending it, according to Assistant County Manager Robin Campbell, who is also the county’s budget director.
So far a little under $250,000 in CRF funding from the state Administrative Office of the Courts has a spending deadline of Dec. 30, allowing the county to pay rent for the new space through the end of the year, according to Campbell.
But, the vast majority of the county’s millions in CRF funding has come from the Department of Commerce. The spending deadline for that money has been extended from Oct. 30 to Nov. 30, Campbell said.
Even with that extension, the county wants to finish renovations of the space in time to meet that original Oct. 30 deadline.
“This is a truly ambitious goal,” Campbell said in a phone interview. “... We owe it to the people of Thurston County who are seeking justice to get the courts back up.”
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