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DA hopes new Commissioners Court will help 19th JDC address 14,000 case backlog
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BATON ROUGE - Though the 19th Judicial District Court was already behind prosecuting cases before 2020, the COVID pandemic and shutdown of nearly all governmental agencies caused it to skyrocket.
Four years later, prosecutors are still playing catch up.
"We're there. We're feeling the impact, still, with COVID and you have to add to that higher numbers of homicide over the past few years,” District Attorney Hillar Moore said.
The impact of those two factors has caused the case backlog to balloon to over 14,000–that includes everything from murder to misdemeanors.
"We've seen a lot of increases in really big cases by the Sheriff’s Office with fentanyl and guns.”
Moore says another factor in the slog is how understaffed they are.
"We really need to be more fully staffed than what we are now.”
In Louisiana, each judicial district is allotted a specific number of assistant district attorneys to prosecute cases. The 19th JDC has 55. While East Baton Rouge parish is the most populated, Orleans Parish has the most — at 83. Jefferson Parish has 54.
"We are allotted a certain number of ADA’s per parish and they have been historically set over the years and we are not the top of the list.”
The lack of available prosecutors directly impacts how quickly cases can go to trial.
"Generally it would be two or three years for murder cases to proceed through the system which is too long.”
One of the most recent instances of this was the Hamed Ghassemi trial. Ghassemi was arrested for the murder of his ex wife in 2015 but was convicted at trial just last year.
In order to try and tackle the backlog, the city-parish implemented the Commissioner’s Court at the beginning of July. The group of four appointed commissioners will take on things like bail hearings, arraignments, domestic violence hearings and post-conviction relief petitions.
"What it's designed to do is have the elected criminal court judges actually be in court, working on the serious cases all day long as opposed to the more ministerial aspects of the job — setting a bond, an arraignment — so those cases can move a lot faster."
Moore says the court congestion affects more than just people waiting for their right to a speedy trial.
"The backlog of the cases and just the volume of the cases and nature of the cases just seem to take a toll emotionally on the people that work on these cases. So not only do we have a backlog, but we have people that are seeing this everyday in and out and the stress levels are extremely high."
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