NO PROSECUTOR: DRUG COURT SHORT-HANDED

THE DRUG court in Washington County is up the creek without a prosecutor.

That's the glum assessment after a grant fell through and the prosecuting
attorney was obliged to pull out of the court. Too many other cases. Too
little time.

The departure was with regrets. Terry Jones, the prosecutor, said his
office will still handle a lot of the paperwork for the court, and will
keep making referrals to it. But the office can't afford to man the
courtroom unless another grant materializes--or some other way is found to
pay for its operation.

All this doesn't kill the court. But it does cripple it, according to Mary
Ann Gunn, the circuit-chancery judge who runs the drug court. The drug
court is only the second one in the state--Pulaski County has the
other--and it opened earlier this year with a lot of high hopes.

The drug court's record in Washington County is brief, but solid. The court
allows non-violent offenders who aren't drug dealers to enroll in a
treatment program instead of facing criminal charges. Twenty-two offenders
are enrolled now, and the nine-month program will graduate its first
participant in November.

The drug court has to have a judge and a lawyer for the defendant, but it
can get by without a prosecutor. Judge Gunn has been using a volunteer
lawyer as a stand-in prosecutor, and has 10 other volunteers willing to do
the work. But, since they aren't real prosecutors, they can't do everything
a prosecutor can. For instance, they can't drop anybody from the program or
write arrest warrants.

The drug court did get some unexpected help from Washington County when the
Quorum Court agreed to give the prosecutor's office three more clerks, who
will be able to do some of the paperwork handled by deputy prosecutors now.
Terry Jones says that, if he had the clerks, he might be able to free a
deputy to work the drug court. That's a hope and a wish right now. The
reality is that the court is too close to breaking down.

Which would be a shame. The purpose of such a court is a good one: It helps
non-violent drug offenders get their lives back together. It treats their
drug problems instead of handing out criminal charges and sentences. In
short, the drug court has a good chance of turning these offenders into
productive citizens. So far, the results in Washington County have been
promising.

The search for more grants goes on. Considering the amount of concern over
the drug problem, Judge Gunn's court should be a strong candidate for a
state or federal grant. Here is one of the more effective ways to wage the
war on drugs. This is too good an idea to let it wither.