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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Coronavirus Upends US Court Systems Nationwide

Courthouses shuttered. Thousands of trials on hold. Legal deadlines pushed. The coronavirus pandemic has crippled the U.S. legal system, creating constitutional dilemmas as the accused miss their days in court.

BOSTON (AP) — Courthouses shuttered. Thousands of trials on hold. Legal deadlines pushed. The coronavirus pandemic has crippled the U.S. legal system, creating constitutional dilemmas as the accused miss their days in court.

The public health crisis could build a legal backlog that overwhelms courts across the country, leaving some defendants behind bars longer, and forcing prosecutors to decide which cases to pursue and which to let slide.

(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

"Everybody is scrambling. Nobody really knows how to handle this," said Claudia Lagos, a criminal defense attorney in Boston.

Judges from California to Maine have postponed trials and nearly all in-person hearings to keep crowds from packing courthouses. Trials that were under way — like the high-profile case against millionaire real estate heir Robert Durst — have been halted. Some chief judges have suspended grand juries, rendering new indictments impossible. Others have allowed them to sit, though 6 feet apart.

Prosecutors may have to abandon some low-level cases to keep people from flooding the legal system.

Many judges are holding hearings by phone or video chat to keep all cases from grinding to a halt. Other courts are stymied by outdated technology. The clerk for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Molly Dwyer, likened the logistical challenges to "building the bike as we ride it."

Judges have asked for emergency powers to delay trials longer than the law generally allows and extend key deadlines, such as initial appearances.

That could keep people locked up longer, exposing them to unsafe jail conditions, and violate their constitutional right to a speedy trial, defense lawyers say.

"We shouldn't be creating mechanisms in the current crisis to keep people in jail longer. The jails are just tinderboxes waiting for the virus to take off," said Jeff Chorney, deputy public defender in Alameda County, California. Courts there now have seven days instead of 48 hours to hold arraignments, during which a defendant is often appointed a lawyer and can enter a plea.

The pandemic has shuttered nearly every aspect of everyday life as the death toll mounts and more states impose strict stay-at-home orders. There are nearly 400,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Such coast-to-coast disruptions of the courts system are unprecedented.

In 2004, Hurricane Katrina forced courts in New Orleans to close temporarily. The suspension of legal deadlines after the natural disaster left thousands languishing behind bars for months without formal charges, attorneys say. Lawyers there fear a repeat.

"On a regular day, without a crisis like Katrina and Covid, you can imagine people getting lost in a system like this," said Alanah Odoms Hebert, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. "There will be a lot folks who fall through the cracks."

Virtually no civil litigation is getting done. U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger in Chicago chafed at a recent request for an emergency order barring the alleged misuse of elf and unicorn drawings.

"The world," he said, "is facing a real emergency. (The) plaintiff is not."

The Covid-19 disruptions are causing widespread confusion with prosecutors and defense attorneys as they struggle to file documents, get matters heard in courthouses operating on skeleton crews and share information with jailed clients while maintaining social distancing.

Attorneys for Elizabeth Holmes, head of the blood-testing startup Theranos scheduled to be tried this summer on charges of defrauding investors, asked a California federal judge to exempt them from the orders. They said the restrictions made witness preparation and serving subpoenas difficult. The judge refused.

Attorneys are wary of visiting clients in jails for fear of contracting the virus or spreading it behind bars. They rely on phone calls, which in some jails and prisons are recorded, limiting what they can say.

"You have to sort of chose between your safety and your client's safety ... or their constitutional rights. It's a really impossible situation," said William Isenberg, a Boston defense attorney.

The haphazard operations could lead defendants to challenge convictions, even if their attorneys did the best they could during the virus-related tumult.

Courthouse chaos may worsen when the shutdowns end, as judges try to return to old cases while fielding a burst in new cases. A flood of lawsuits linked to Covid-19 will add to the logjam. More than 100 Covid-19-related lawsuits have been filed since Friday across the United States.

"The courts are looking down the barrel of a real serious bottleneck," said Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. "I don't think anybody has figured out what they're going to do."

Crime victims are also forced to wait. In Minnesota, the virus has postponed the federal trial of an Illinois militia leader accused of being the ringleader in the 2017 pipe bombing of a Minnesota mosque. Michael Hari's trial was already postponed once. Now it's scheduled for late July.

Mohamed Omar, executive director of the mosque, said community members want to see quick justice, but that he understands the need for a delay.

"The safety of our community and those that are vulnerable are more important to us now more than any other thing," he said. "This is bigger than all of us."

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Courthouse News contributed to this report.

Categories / Courts, Law, National

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