ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997 TAG: 9704080027
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA THE ROANOKE TIMES CHRISTIANSBURG
Judge, police, lawyers come up with new way of handling criminal cases to avoid lengthy delays - and dropped charges.
Local law enforcement officers could once be heard grousing about how long it took to get their cases to trial in Montgomery County. Now they say the system is flowing right along because of changes made this year.
In September, the Montgomery County Drug Task Force had some cases that had lingered as long as two years waiting to go to trial, according to Larry Lehman, special agent in charge of the Virginia State Police drug suppression division.
Such a long wait can jeopardize cases. Memories fade, people sometimes move out of the area and, in the worst-case scenarios, the time limit set by the law runs out and the state is forced to drop charges. The "speedy trial rule" meant fewer than five cases were dropped in a year, but the commonwealth's attorney said even one was too many.
Law enforcement officers and others who had complained about the old system are raving about the new one.
"The bottom line is everything is working, everything is going to trial expeditiously," Lehman said.
The biggest problem was getting court dates for cases.
Montgomery County Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith conceded in September that the system needed change. He said the ongoing task of scheduling court dates, which at the time was being handled by his office, had become overwhelming.
"We have one secretary who spends the majority of her time trying to get court dates," he said in September.
The changes are the result of a meeting that month that included Circuit Judge Ray Grubbs, Keith and area law enforcement leaders.
Defense attorneys are now responsible for setting a Circuit Court date immediately after their clients' preliminary hearing, or on the next "term day," when grand juries meet. Previously, that action had taken place over the phone or by letter, a slower process that allowed some people to repeatedly delay going to court.
"It really encourages people to set cases [after the preliminary hearing], if they know they don't have to appear on term day," Keith said.
Every case now in the system, he said, has a court date set.
Here is how it works:
Usually, if police arrest a suspect and file a felony charge, the case first goes to General District Court for a preliminary hearing. The judge in that court decides whether there is sufficient evidence to send the case to the grand jury.
The grand jury, a group of citizens who hear summaries of the state's evidence on individual charges every three months, decides whether there is sufficient evidence to send the case on to trial in Circuit Court.
Under the old system, the grand jury had four set dates to meet each year but often was called back to hear more indictments because there was not enough time to review all the cases in one day. A single set of indictments for a term could number more than 200.
The new system has two grand jury days scheduled for each term of the court. The days are the second Tuesday and the fourth Wednesday of January, April, July and October.
Another complaint about the old system was that officers could sometimes spend all day waiting to testify before the grand jury and never be called.
The new system divides up the cases that the grand jury will hear by department. Law enforcement officers in the county now know that all the cases involving their agency will be heard on a specific term date.
Virginia Tech Police Chief Mike Jones said in September that his officers had many concerns about the old system and how cases had languished for months and even years. He and his officers now offer their praise.
"As far as we're concerned, it's going well," Jones said. "It is a credit to Judge Grubbs, the attorneys he asked for help and the commonwealth's attorney's office."
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