A backlog of tens of thousands of court cases, from felony murder to misdemeanor shoplifting, will be resolved in the coming months in Fulton County.
As part of a plan to reform its criminal justice system, the county is making a push to clear out old cases and start fresh with a new way of moving them along as they enter the system.
That means felony cases where the defendant has waited for trial for more than a year will be prioritized, and the solicitor general and magistrate courts will get extra help to work through their own cases.
There are about 200 felony cases that are more than a year old. The backlog will also clear out about 18,000 civil cases that are in magistrate court and 29,000 misdemeanor cases that are in front of the solicitor general. Fulton is putting $1.2 million toward the effort.
“Right now, we don’t have enough hands,” Solicitor General Carmen Smith said. “We’re so overwhelmed with the backlog, it’s hard to tell what would be normal.”
In the felony cases, defendants remain in custody until their cases are heard. Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Gail S. Tusan said those that are in custody for an extended period of time are kept away from their family and jobs, and have more barriers to reentry if they are not guilty of the crimes they are accused of. Additionally, long waits for trial mean challenges with witnesses and evidence.
“We need to make those cases a priority,” Tusan said. “They should be tried and resolved as soon as they can be.”
The county expects to get through about 40 felony cases this year, and the remainder in 2017. In addition to being difficult for those who are charged, it is also costly to hold inmates. A reduction in inmates would save the county money — those that are not guilty would be released, and those that are found guilty would often be transferred to the state system.
Fulton County Manager Dick Anderson estimated the county could save between $4 million and $8 million annually by lowering the jail population by up to 750 inmates — the average daily population for July was between 2,500 and 2,575 — and by streamlining the courts.
Smith, the solicitor general, said Atlanta’s decision to abolish its traffic court and a change in how cases are entered led to her backlog. Her cases come from the county’s 14 cities, and her office has two years to determine whether people who were accused of simple battery, simple assault, stalking, driving under the influence, shoplifting and criminal trespass should be charged with a crime. Not everything that comes to her office would go to trial. But before they are resolved, people would be in limbo about whether or not they would even be charged.
The case would have to be entered into the system either way.
“It’s an ongoing battle,” Smith said.
Reducing the backlog across courts will have a “tremendous positive impact,” Tusan said. Additionally, some money will also go toward expanding accountability programs, like the DUI court, that deal with the underlying reasons people are driving drunk and help keep them out of jail.
Anna Roach, Fulton’s chief strategy officer, said the steps the county was taking to create a new framework were “fantastic.”
“I think it’s a very exciting first group of projects,” she said.
The backlog reduction is just the first step in a plan that intends to reform the justice system: Fulton intends to move cases through more quickly, reduce the jail population and decrease the number of people who re-offend after they are arrested.
The county is also taking steps to better treat people with mental health issues, which they hope will lead to solutions other than incarceration.
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