Thurston commission moves to start addressing pandemic case backlog
Thurston County has released $1 million in federal relief funds for addressing a backlog in court cases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Board of County Commissioners decided to release the funds from its $28 million American Rescue Plan allocation during an agenda setting meeting last week.
The $1 million would help the county’s justice system start addressing a growing backlog of criminal referrals, but as much as $8 million has been earmarked for potential use.
Last week, County Manager Ramiro Chavez presented a proposal to release $2 million, which could in turn be used to judge how much more funding will be needed.
However, the board compromised on Tuesday, choosing to only release $1 million for now, after hearing from a panel of county officials.
Commissioner Gary Edwards proposed the $1 million amount after Commissioners Carolina Mejia and Tye Menser reached an impasse. Menser supported releasing $2 million immediately while Mejia did not.
Mejia said she felt the request should be considered after getting further along a multi-week process to determine the county’s budget. This way the board would have a better picture of the budget requests before them and the funds available.
“For me I feel we have a responsibility to our community to reassure them that we’re using this one-time funding appropriately,” Mejia said. “At this time, I’m just thinking that we’re acting prematurely.”
Edwards said he did not support supplying the full $8 million but he wished to start releasing some funds in the meantime.
“I’m just afraid if we withhold everything, we’re kind of holding back on the tools they might need to move forward,” Edwards said.
Assistant County Manager Robin Campbell said offices and departments will be responsible for tracking their expenses and subsequently charging a recovery fund the board previously established to hold their American Rescue Plan allocation.
The referrals backlog
Christy Peters, chief of staff at the Prosecutor’s Office, said there are over 1,800 referrals and counting that her staff have identified for this funding request.
“The majority of those cases are these cases where the defendants have not been arrested and they’re not in front of the court on a preliminary appearance,” Peters said.
Peters said her staff have prioritized in-custody cases, causing the courts system to focus on the most serious cases. Though she believes this is the right approach, it has nonetheless left a lot of people in limbo.
“So, there are multiple victims out there in Thurston County that have been victims of robberies, thefts, other types of crimes that our office has not reviewed,” Peters said.
If lower-level cases don’t get reviewed, she said prosecutors can’t decide whether a case may be appropriate for a diversion program, which can help people remedy behavior and avoid a criminal record.
As a result, Peters said the county has had to field more and more inquiries from concerned citizens who are waiting to have their cases reviewed.
Under normal conditions, Peter said about two out of three referrals may lead to charges. However, she said Prosecuting Attorney Jon Tunheim hopes to file fewer charges than that.
“What Jon Tunheim is proposing now, because of the circumstances of the extreme backlog, that we are going to be looking at these referrals with an even higher level of scrutiny,” Peters said. “We’re anticipating a filing of those 1,800-plus cases in the neighborhood of 1,000.”
This means a workload of about 1,000 cases would fall on top of a court system already stressed by pandemic-related scheduling delays and the fallout from the State v. Blake decision, which declared the state’s simple drug possession law unconstitutional.
Cases already in the system
Patrick O’Connor, the county’s director of public defense, reminded the board that the backlog can be defined beyond referrals that have yet to be reviewed and charged.
“One way to define the backlog is the impact on cases that have gone into the system throughout the pandemic and will continue to be in the system throughout the pandemic for the next handful of months, perhaps even longer, as a result of the impacts of the pandemic,” O’Connor said.
Judge Mary Sue Wilson told the board that Superior Court has had the capacity to operate two large jury trials at a time since March rather than three to four trials pre-pandemic. She said the months long pause in jury trials put pressure on the court system.
“Right now, we have a little bit of relief and that is because we’re setting criminal trials and we have been doing them since March with no interruption,” Wilson said. “That encourages parties to resolve cases because they know their criminal jury trial date is real.”
Though jury trials are scheduled, they don’t necessarily take place every week because defendants may agree to plea deal at the last minute, Wilson said.
Unlike with Superior Court, Christy Peters said her office does not have pending referrals for District Court because such cases have already been charged by an officer on scene. However, they are still facing their own backlog of cases.
District Court, which has been running four courtrooms a week, has a stable backlog of 1,600 cases, said Administrator Frankie Peters. He said the court sees about as many resolutions as it does new filings at its current pace.
“We’re actually kind of reached this point where everything’s even,” Peters said. “We’re not necessarily growing a backlog, but we’re also not really chipping away at it like we’d like to.”
