COVID causes backlog of court cases, changes proposed

Corrections and clarifications: The Judiciary of Guam is proposing temporarily using six-member juries except in first- and second-degree felony cases. A previous version of this story misstated the number of proposed jurors for felony trials.

The Judiciary of Guam sent four proposed bills to senators this week asking for longer speedy trial time limits and temporarily allowing juries of six rather than 12 people.

The changes are meant to alleviate a backlog of cases that have resulted from the pandemic.

In a letter to Sen. Therese Terlaje who is the legislative oversight chairwoman for the judiciary, Chief Justice Philip Carbullido wrote that the pandemic prompted the court to suspend non-essential court operations for most of the past six months.

“The suspension of non-essential court operations has resulted in a staggering and unprecedented backlog of cases—a backlog which continues to grow each day and threatens the statutory right of all criminal defendants to a speedy jury trial,” Carbullido wrote.

Additionally, the courtrooms aren’t big enough for socially distant in-person jury selection or jury trials.

 “These constraints will cause further delay in the court’s ability to tackle its backlog and will have lasting effects on the delivery of justice in all cases before the court,” he wrote.

With that in mind, the bills the judiciary sent to lawmakers propose permanent and temporary changes to the law.

The measures also suggest permanently expanding powers of the magistrate judges to preside over non-dispositive hearings and permanently changing the law to increase the speedy trial time limits in criminal cases.

The law now states defendants in custody have a right to a speedy trial within 45 days, and defendants who aren’t in custody have a right to a speedy trial within 60 days.

The bill proposed by the court seeks to permanently change speedy trial limits so that defendants in misdemeanor cases who are in custody have the right to a speedy trial within 60 days. Misdemeanor cases for defendants in custody would have a speedy trial limit of 75 days.

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For felony cases, the judiciary’s bill seeks to extend speedy trial limit for defendants in custody to 90 days, and 180 days for defendants who aren’t in custody.

The bills suggest temporarily allowing six-member juries except for cases where a defendant is charged with a first-degree or a second-degree felony, and temporarily reducing the number of peremptory challenges available in criminal cases.

Carbuillido said the changes in the bills “aim to strike a necessary compromise between the rights of criminal defendants to a speedy public trial and the capabilities of the judicial system to carry out this duty during and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This article originally appeared on Pacific Daily News: COVID causes backlog of court cases, changes proposed