Caseloads mount up again as criminal trials delayed until March

Caseloads are mounting in Thurston County Superior Court, as the most recent postponement of criminal jury trials is set to end on March 1.

The suspension came Jan. 14, after a letter from County Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek dated Nov. 30 expressed concern about rising COVID-19 cases in the county and an outbreak in the jail. This comes after a year of trial postponements and a mounting caseload.

Superior Court Judge Erik Price, during an update with Thurston County commissioners on Thursday, said there were somewhere between 50 to 60 jury trials slated to start once the suspension ends. In a previous meeting, Price said that under normal circumstances, there could be about 10 trials set for the same time.

In mid-January, there were 850 active pretrial cases in Thurston County Superior Court, Superior Court Administrator Pam Hartman Beyer wrote in an email to The JOLT. That’s down from the 972 in September, when trials were permitted to resume for a time. There were 167 inmates in the Thurston County Jail awaiting trial at that time, she wrote.

Price noted that during the few-month span that trials were permitted to resume, they conducted five. That may not sound like much, he said, considering the 972 active criminal cases at that time — nearly double from the same time a year prior. But, he said, many more cases than that were concluded through plea deals.

“The fact is, just having the potential for a trial, with a real jury coming in, we saw massive numbers of resolutions that otherwise probably would not have happened. And that is something that is on the forefront of our mind. It’s almost as if, even though we can only do two trials at a time, you get so much more movement in cases when you have the reality of a potential trial,” said Price.

Even if trials were to resume, the number of venues available for them has been cut in half. Only one courtroom on the courthouse campus is large enough to hold jury trials. A room located on Chandler Court in Olympia has been leased out by the county to serve as a second venue.

Thurston County Commissioner Tye Menser likened the court’s decision to delay trials to hard decisions the school systems have had to make: whether to reopen and risk further COVID cases or take the consequences of at-home learning.

“The right thing to do is what was done, but the system is building up and the lawyers aren’t getting cases resolved without that trial outlet. … I was listening to the prosecutor and public defender director commiserate about how both of their staffs are kind of experiencing the same things, which is a lot of frustration, caseloads are mounting,” Menser said.

On Nov. 30, Abdelmalek wrote a letter to the court expressing concern about the “significant increase in COVID-19 transmission in Thurston County.” Not long after, the Thurston County Jail experienced an outbreak among its staff and inmates. Although he didn’t have the exact number on-hand, Thurston County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Cameron Simper told The JOLT there were around 10 positive tests. All tests were confined to a specific dorm within the jail, he said.

An emergency order from the court cites the letter and the outbreak as the motivation for suspending trials yet again. In addition to criminal trials, the order delays all civil trials until June 7.