With in-person court hearings set to resume, backlog of cases remains

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Nearly a year after COVID-19 shut down local courts, officials in the Onondaga County court system said cases could be backed up for months or potentially years.

The Onondaga County Supreme Court only held a few time-sensitive or urgent cases in a virtual format over the past year, said Justice James Murphy. In-person cases are slated to resume April 1, but officials are concerned that nearly 60 homicide cases and thousands of other civil cases have gone unheard.

“We are in a hard place based on budgetary (issues) and minimum staffing capacity,” said Murphy, who oversaw most of the judicial process over the past year. “You are talking about taking a year off of trials, or even grand juries for a while. A ton of people are waiting for their day in court.”

In cases involving issues such as parking ticket violations, the court hasn’t held trials since the cases don’t pertain to “imminent issues,” said Kathleen Dougherty, executive director of the Onondaga County Bar Association’s Assigned Counsel Program. It can also be more challenging to judge the credibility of people involved in trials in virtual settings, she said.

“The downside is that there is no human connection without in-person trials,” Dougherty said. “We are missing that greatly. It is hard to judge whether people are credible.”

When courts reopen, COVID-19 restrictions will still be in place, which can make it hard to catch up on delayed cases, Dougherty and Murphy said.

The policies will only allow 10 people in the courtroom at a time, unless rules regarding the pandemic significantly change, Dougherty said. The in-person restrictions are a considerable improvement from the online format, but they still significantly slow proceedings, she said.

Thomas Keck, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, said the current backlog is unlike any issue that courts have faced before, even during historic moments.

The Civil War disrupted civilian courts, and so did World War II when Hawaii was placed under martial law. But the courts haven’t seen a sustained period of disruption like this, Keck said.

The courts have been working to decrease the backlog and help people who have participated in virtual trials during the pandemic, Dougherty said.

The court used a portion of its budget to purchase new technology to ease the burden of virtual trials, Dougherty said. The bar association also set up a telephone account and paid for calls that clients make to their attorneys, which helps clients who don’t have internet access or who are incarcerated, she said.

“There have been a lot of efforts for clients to have access,” Dougherty said. “The first and primary concern is for people actively incarcerated. They’ve done a great job for clients in jail to get access to the internet as well as private conversations.”

As the justice system recovers from the year-long halt, public officials are hopeful that the backlog will shrink and cases will move forward.