DRUG CASES TO BE SPREAD ACROSS COURT

Swamped System Can't Handle More Work

The glut of cases in drug court in Baton Rouge has broken the system, court
officials said Wednesday. As a result, the judges are planning to spread
drug cases to all eight sections of court that handle criminal cases in the
19th Judicial District.

Mike Mitchell, head of the parish's Public Defender's Office, said his
board decided recently to notify District Court Judge Don Johnson that
public defenders have too many cases in drug court and can accept no more.

"It's a complex problem with no simple solution," Mitchell said Wednesday.

Mitchell said he and his board are waiting for the final version of the
proposal and they will wait to see whether the caseload becomes more
manageable, or whether drug cases start to gum up other sections of the court.

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Doug Moreau said Wednesday
evening that he learned of the proposed changes earlier in the day and
wants to study them more closely before commenting publicly.

Changes could be made April 16, according to a proposed drug court
reorganization plan under review by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys.

State District Judge Bonnie Jackson said Wednesday the caseload in drug
court has been "ballooning exponentially." She said that's because it takes
drug cases much longer than other criminal cases to clear the system.

"It's not that drug court has three times as many cases, it just takes so
much longer for the reviews, drug tests. . Things just bottleneck," Jackson
said. "Cases can't move fast enough to get ready for the new group of cases
coming up.

"What we propose to do is more in line with what's done in the rest of the
state and the country," Jackson said.

The proposal calls for every criminal court to start getting drug cases
based on the same system used to allot other criminal cases. Johnson, who
presides over drug court, would continue in that capacity.

But Johnson would get no new cases until he is able to clear all of the
cases now before drug court. When those cases clear, Johnson's section of
court would be allotted cases in the same manner as the other criminal courts.

Jo Bruce, the judicial administrator for the 19th Judicial District Court,
said Wednesday that drug court started with a grant about 10 years ago and
evolved into two components. One involves the prosecution of the cases. The
other is a post-conviction treatment program, named Passages, she said.

Under the new proposal, the post-conviction program, would continue to be
run by state District Judge William Morvant, who volunteered, Jackson said.

Johnson also said he's willing to continue as drug court judge -- keeping
his existing cases -- provided the flow of new cases into his section
ceases April 16, Jackson said.

Drug court began as a pilot project in 1993. The initial concept was to
speed up cases by prosecuting people quickly and sentencing them to long
periods of incarceration, Jackson said.

But as the project evolved, Jackson said, judges noticed that the typical
drug court defendant was not the "big-time drug dealer." She said most are
addicts who need treatment.

Jackson said drug court operations were made more complex in the 1990s when
the Legislature changed state drug laws to require that all people
convicted of distributing drugs serve at least five years in prison. She
said that in cases in which someone shares a rock of crack cocaine with a
friend, prosecutors have a problem with that tough sentence.

Prosecutors might not think the small-time addicts deserve to go to prison
for five years, but they are unwilling to reduce the charge unless they can
see that the defendant will stop abusing illegal drugs, the judge said.

That quandary often requires defendants to report to court frequently and
undergo several drug screenings before prosecutors will accept a plea deal,
Jackson said.

"The workload on the judge is tremendous, but it is even worse on his staff
who, at the end of the day, has to update court minutes and files based on
what happened earlier in the day," Jackson said.

Bruce said the proposed changes were made with the help of Suzette Brandt,
a consultant who works with the U.S. Department of Justice.