Caseloads Swamp Border Courts
Five southwest districts now handle 26 percent of all federal criminal filings in the United States. In the District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 1998 criminal filings were up nearly 72.8 percent over 1997, topping 3,000. Filings in 1999 are expected to exceed those in 1998. The District Court for the Southern District of California had a weighted caseload per authorized judgeship of over 1,000 cases in 1998. The national average is 484. In the Western District of Texas there were 48 completed trials per authorized judgeship in 1998, almost double the national average of 25. The District Courts for New Mexico and Arizona have equally eye-popping statistics. What's going on?
Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Carolyn Dineen King, asked that question when she was elevated to chief judge in January. The answer was the same in all the border districts. Increases in law enforcement resources at the border are not matched by increases in court resources. As a result, the courts are swamped with work. Working in these border courts has become, in the words of Chief Judge George P. Kazen (S. D. Tex.) "like working in a war zone." Incredibly, in the Western District of Texas, Del Rio has a caseload nearly twice the national average per judge—and no sitting judge. Similarly, Las Cruces, in the District of New Mexico, receives 65 percent of the district's criminal cases, but has no active judge, only a duty judge who sits for a month at a time. "The duty judges do anything that needs to be done," said Chief Judge John E. Conway (D. N.M.), "hearings, trials, sentencings. They have to. At Las Cruces, we have 400 defendants in jail awaiting court action."
"We're overwhelmed with cases, both immigration cases and drug cases. Anywhere you go in the border enforcement area, it will involve both kinds of cases," said Chief Judge Stephen M. McNamee (D. Ariz.). "Last year 287,000 illegal aliens were apprehended in the Tucson sector, and the U.S. Attorney's Office prose-cuted almost 2,085 felony cases in the Tucson division, which is an increase of about 43.7 percent over 1997. One of our magistrate judges, on her first day on the job, had 41 prisoners presented for arraignment. If the cases ever jump to 3,000, where do we get the judges to handle the cases?"
King spent six days in April visiting the Texas border courts, asking questions and assessing the situation. She talked to judges, public defenders, probation and pretrial services officers, U.S. attorneys, lawyers with criminal and civil practices, the heads of Border Patrol sectors, and DEA, U.S. Customs and FBI agents. "I found a lot of heroes," said King. "People working night and day with-out complaint. The number of people dealing with staggering caseloads amazed me." That's when she came up with the idea for a southwest border courts conference. She approached the Administrative Office and the Federal Judicial Center for assistance in conducting a conference bringing together judges from throughout the region. "District and magistrate judges have developed techniques for dealing with the caseload volume, "said King. "Some techniques are very creative. Others could use improvement. The theory is to get the experts together and lift all boats."
The experts at this conference, to be held in February 2000, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will be district court judges from the border divisions. Selected magistrate judges, chief probation and pretrial services officers, and the clerks of the district courts for the Southern District of California, the Western and Southern Districts of Texas, and the Districts of Arizona and New Mexico also will be invited. Kazen sees the conference as a specialized workshop. "It will be judges talking to judges. A dialogue session with small groups. We need to hear how everybody copes. Everyone has come up with different ways to deal with the inordinate number of cases. We need to learn from each other."
King anticipates a conference that will deal with different management initiatives, how to reduce the mountain of paperwork that accompanies huge caseloads, and how to make the most of inadequate judicial resources. For example, how do courts provide enough interpreters, who work hour after hour in rotation in some courts? How do some courts find housing for detainees, some of whom must be transported to the court from hundreds of miles away? How do probation and pretrial services officers find criminal records of defendants with aliases in multiple jurisdictions? And while the number of defendants has mushroomed, there have been no new Article III judgeships created since 1990 and no increase in U.S. Marshals personnel in some of the border districts in years. Chief Judge Marilyn Huff (S. D. Calif.) and Chief Judge Harry Hudspeth (W. D. Tex.) both note the lack of new judgeships as a continuing problem. In Hudspeth's district, it took four years to fill the new judgeships created in 1990, an interminable delay in these hard-pressed courts. Huff relies on senior judges, all of whom are in their mid-80s, to meet the caseload. "Last year, a senior judge terminated 768 criminal cases, and just last week one of our senior judges held 11 sentencings and two trials," said Huff. "The district only survives with the assistance of our senior judges. But they're helping us voluntarily. In the long-term, we can't continue to depend so heavily on them. We need help." The Judicial Conference has recommended the creation of 16 new federal district judgeships in the five border districts, but Congress has yet to take final action.
Aware of the situation in the courts and in its own executive agencies operating along the border, the Department of Justice has formed a Southwest Border Council, with members drawn from the Border Patrol, DEA, FBI, U.S. attorneys, and U.S. Customs. The Council, which already has met several times, will eventually produce recommendations on ways to maximize allocation of Justice Department resources and coordinate agency efforts. While the Council is independent of any Judiciary border initiative, AO staff have attended Council meetings and will offer a Judiciary perspective on, and input to, final recommendations. A Council representative also will be invited to address the Judiciary's February conference.
"Huge law enforcement resources have been poured into this area in recent years," said King. "Since 1994, the number of Border Patrol agents has increased 99 percent; INS agents, 93 percent; and DEA agents, 155 percent. But we haven't looked at how this affects the Judiciary or how we should allocate our own existing resources. At the conference, we hope to look at some of these issues as well.
12 month ended September 30, 1998 | |||||
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All District Courts
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Total Filings
467 685
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Criminal Felony
69 283
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Weighted Filings
484 834
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Terminations 466 677
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Trials Completed
25 27
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| Source: Federal Court Management Statistics 1998 | |||||
Attorney General Janet Reno, shown here being welcomed by Administrative Office Director Leonidas Ralph Mecham and Committee chair Judge Wm. Terrell Hodges, met with the Judicial Conference Executive Committee to discuss issues of mutual concern to the Judiciary and the Department of Justice. Among the items discussed was the serious problem of insufficient funding of the U.S. Marshals Service along the southwest border of the United States. The number of deputy marshals in the Southern and Western Districts of Texas has not increased since 1994, and to meet its responsibilities, the U.S.M.S now uses contractors to process new detainees, transport prisoners, and serve as guards. DOJ has created a Southwest Border Council to study the situation.
Legislation Moves Slowly as End of Session Nears
Only weeks away from the scheduled ending of the first session of the 106th Congress, the President signed an appropriations bill that is a typical vehicle for courthouse funding, and the House passed legislation affecting multidistrict, multiforum jurisdiction and class action jurisdiction. Other bills of interest to the Judiciary continued to inch their way through Congress.
PL. 106-58 | Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, FY 2000
On September 29, the President signed H.R. 2490, a bill making appropriations for the Treasury Department, the U.S. Postal Service, the Executive Office of the President, and certain independent agencies, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2000. The appropriations bill, which normally would be the vehicle for new courthouse construction funding, contains only funding for seven repair and alteration projects. For the third year in a row, the President's budget did not include a request for courthouse money, and Congress could not find the additional money to fund the program. The bill also contains language to retain fiscal year 1997 courthouse construction funds that were in dan-ger of lapsing on September 30, 1999.
However, P.L. 106-58 contains a pay adjustment for rank and file federal employees effective in 2000, and a Presidential pay raise effective in 2001. It also clears the way for a 3.4 percent pay adjustment for members of Congress and top level executive branch leaders, since it does not contain language withholding the increase. Traditionally, when members of Congress have received pay adjustments they have not blocked similar pay adjustments for federal judges. Of course, for judges to receive a pay adjustment, Congress also must take the affirmative action of waiving section 140 of P.L. 97-92. That language is included in the Senate's fiscal year 2000 Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which still awaits final approval.
H.R. 2112 | Multidistrict, Multiparty, Multiforum Jurisdiction Act of 1999
The House passed H.R. 2112 last month and sent it to the Senate for consideration. The bill, in part, is in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Lexecon and would amend section 1407 (the multidistrict litigation statute) of title 28 to allow a trans-feree court to retain jurisdiction over referred cases of a consolidated action for trial. The transferee court could also transfer the action to another district. The bill also creates a new section 1369 of title 28, which grants original jurisdiction to the federal courts over civil actions involving minimal diversity jurisdiction among adverse parties arising from a single accident involving at least 25 persons, each of whom must have sustained injuries of $75,000. This bill is sup-ported by the Judicial Conference.
H.R. 1875 |
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Interstate Class Action Jurisdiction Act of 1999 Class Action Fairness Act of 1999 |
S. J. Res. 3 | A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to protect the rights of crime victims.
The Senate Judiciary Committee reported out S.J. Res. 3 and Committee chair Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has indicated he would like to bring the resolution to the floor for a vote in this Congress. A similar Senate Victims' Rights Amendment was offered in the 105th Congress but that bill never went to the Senate floor for a vote. The Judicial Conference prefers a statutory approach to victims' rights over a constitutional amendment.
S. 254 &|H.R. 1501 | | Juvenile Crime |
The House and Senate bills were to be considered by a conference committee after the August recess, but gun control provisions have become a political flashpoint and slowed progress. Passage of a bill will depend upon an agreement on gun control. The Judicial Conference has taken no position on these bills but it opposes mandatory minimum sentencing, and has expressed concern over the growing trend to federalize offenses traditionally the responsibility of state criminal justice systems.
S. 1145 | Judgeships
S. 1145, the Federal Judgeship Act of 1999, contains the Judicial Conference recommendation for the creation of 69 Article III judgeships. The bill was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in May, but even though the Administrative Office continues to impress upon committee members and staff the need for new judgeships, the Senate Judiciary Committee has yet to consider the bill.
Both the House and Senate juvenile justice bills contain three additional judgeships for the District of Arizona, four for the Middle District of Florida, and two for the Southern District of Florida.
S. 625, the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1999, would create 18 temporary bankruptcy judgeships and extend temporary bankruptcy judgeships in five districts. It is now uncertain when, or if, S. 625 will come to a vote in this session.
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