By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Sometimes a study session in front of the Barton County Commission is just that. After Tuesday's open meeting, County Attorney Levi Morris shared his concerns with commissioners regarding the potential dismissal of criminal cases later this year because of a defendant's statutory right to a speedy trial. The speedy trial requirement, temporarily nullified because of COVID-19, is again in effect.
"My outlook right now is I am very concerned we don't have enough judges dedicated to criminal trials or enough slots," he said. "We haven't had this problem for the five years I've been here. We didn't have this problem when we opened back up after COVID. But right now, I'm worried that, come October, there are going to be speedy-trial dismissals. I want the five of you to know about it and know that I'm on it."
Morris said the problem stems back to January when District Judge Carey Hipp was promoted to Chief Judge of the 20th Judicial District. Hipp had previously handled most criminal cases in Barton County. Most of those cases are now assigned to former Chief Judge Steve Johnson, who was also in attendance at Tuesday's study session and disagreed with Morris' assertion.
"Mr. Morris has known about this deadline for two years on speedy trial statute coming around on March 1," Johnson said. "We've never denied him a jury trial. We've never continued a jury trial without the state's request."
Johnson said one criminal case was tried last year, and if trials are not set, they do not go before a judge.
"The problem is, there's a huge fight between the defense counsel and the county attorney right now, and they're asking for trials on everything and we're setting them," he said. "That's really what it comes down to."
"I haven't even addressed that part, though," Morris replied. "All the jury trials I'm talking about are just felony jury trials. I think he's talking about two particular defense attorneys who used to be one-seventh of the misdemeanor contract who now represent two-fifths of the contract, who have just decided they want to set all their misdemeanor clients for trials. Those aren't even on the current calendar."
Commissioner Shawn Hutchinson confirmed with Johnson that the number of judges allocated to a judicial district are determined at the state level. When Morris reiterated that his purpose at Tuesday's study session was merely to keep commissioners informed of a problem he saw coming in April, Johnson said it's been on the radar for two years.
"The problem is not the deadline," Morris said. "The problem is the allocation of judges and your scheduling mechanism. You give me one week a month for jury trials, and you tell me they do it in Ellis COunty. My response is I don't have Ellis County judges. Ellis County doesn't double-book jury trials. Ellis County is a different environment. How am I supposed to do seven jury trials in June? At some point, this amounts to the court trying to tell the county attorney to plead cases out better."
Johnson later explained the process of scheduling trials to the commission, including that the 20th Judicial District covers five counties and judges must also schedule trials in those counties.
"I think the fact that it looks blank in Barton County because we're in another county, he thinks he's getting less time than what we can set him in," said Johnson. "It really wouldn't make any difference because, even if we started a jury trial every day, there would still be the same number of jury trials spread out through the docket. It's just a question of which ones come up and which one you're going to try. Nobody has more control of which ones are going get tried than the county attorney."