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| After Delays, Va. Inmates Get Hearings |
| By Hampton Roads Daily Press |
| Published: 03/20/2003 |
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One by one, 14 inmates - bound at the ankles and wrists and wearing orange jumpsuits - shuffled before the chief judge of Hampton's circuit court March 3. They had no scheduled hearing, but the court's four judges had had enough of scheduling delays by the circuit court clerk's office. So, they took matters into their own hands and scheduled the hearings themselves. The defendants - arrested on bench warrants for probation violations or failing to appear in court - got their first meeting with a judge since their arrest. That meeting came days, and in some cases weeks, later than the law says it should. The judges blame Clerk James Bohnaker. He blames budget cuts that forced him to eliminate four positions in his office - making delays unavoidable, he said. Regardless of blame, about 100 people since November have seen delays in getting before a judge. Virginia law says defendants arrested on bench warrants should see a judge on the next business day after arrest. Monday's unscheduled court hearings were designed to catch up the court on the backlog. By the time the men and women went back to jail, they all had attorneys and a date for their next court appearance. The unprecedented decision by the judges to hold hearings served as yet another signal to the circuit court clerk that the judges want to see defendants before them in a speedy fashion. On Jan. 31, the judges issued a court order demanding that Bohnaker and his office improve scheduling. Last week, defendants were still being scheduled for appearances weeks from now. 'I've got the commonwealth attorney's attention and the jail's attention and maybe even the clerk's attention that, when someone's arrested on a capias, there's going to be somebody with a black robe the next day that they need to see,' said Chief Judge Christopher W. Hutton. Bohnaker said he was glad that Hutton heard the arraignments. 'I'm very pleased to see that the judges have recognized their responsibility in bringing these defendants before the court in a swift fashion,' Bohnaker said. 'It has been an embarrassment to this city that the court administrator and the judges have refused to take back this responsibility.' Despite the actions taken March 3, the judges have not decided to start doing the court scheduling themselves. Until March 2002, the judges' secretaries did the scheduling. Last spring, Bohnaker's office took it over. 'I'd like to say that this resolves it,' Hutton said about the hearings. 'But I think that would be overly optimistic. We're going to keep our antenna up to make sure that people are brought up as soon as the capias is served.' In December, judges and attorneys in Hampton began noticing that people arrested on a bench warrant, also called a capias, were taking longer than the law allows to get into court for arraignment, which is when they have an attorney assigned to them and a hearing date set. Delays were bound to happen, said Bohnaker, because of the budget cuts. Bohnaker said he tried several times to get the judges to take back the scheduling. He said he only took it over to eliminate delays under the former system. Virginia law doesn't require either the clerks or judges to actually schedule cases on the docket. However, the judges say Bohnaker took on the responsibility freely and must stick to it because it was working up until Bohnaker cut his staff. Budget cuts prompted Bohnaker to ask the judges to take back the scheduling. They refused, saying that the new system of scheduling could not just be returned to their secretaries. Hutton said a two-year planning process initiated by Judge Wilford Taylor provided the court system with a viable and more efficient way of scheduling that cannot just be abandoned because of budget strife. 'We're going to follow the plan,' Hutton said. Since the judges' complaints about scheduling became public, Bohnaker said his staff has been unfairly criticized. 'Quite frankly,' Bohnaker said, 'my patience has been exhausted in that my good, hard-working staff has been maligned for not doing a job that's not even their responsibility under the law.' |
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