The District Court’s current trial backlog stands at 577 cases, or more than 18 months’ work by eight judges. Picture: Roger Wyman.
Source: News Limited
ALMOST 600 criminal cases are waiting to go on trial before the state’s beleaguered District Court — a backlog that would take judges more than 18 months to clear.
The Courts Administration Authority has given The Advertiser unprecedented insight into the jurisdiction’s ongoing struggle with its mammoth case load.
It has revealed no more than eight trials can be heard per week because just eight of the 10 court rooms in the antiquated Sir Samuel Way Building, that are equipped for criminal matters, are available for criminal cases.
And while the court is staffed by 18 judges, the demands of writing judgments and presiding over civil cases often means there are not eight judges available to hear criminal trials.
Even if no more criminal cases were filed in 2015, it would still take more than 18 months to dispose of the trials currently on the court’s docket.
Attorney-General John Rau.
Yesterday, lawyers and advocates said the choked system “angered and “exasperated” victims and defendants alike, delayed justice and overloaded prisons.
They said a lack of State Government investment had contributed to “excessive delays” — but Attorney-General John Rau dubbed that “simplistic”.
He said the blame lay with lawyers and defendants who “no-showed” trials, forcing courts to operate “like a low-cost, high-volume budget airline”.
“If your flight from Adelaide to Melbourne isn’t full, the plane still flies and you can never get the cost of those empty seats back,” he said.
Law Society of South Australia president Rocco Perrotta.
“So you overbook, believing 40 per cent of passengers won’t show up, and then everyone bobs along for the flight and you’ve got an even bigger problem.
“These are the problems the courts have got, and what this government is trying to do is deal with false reservations and eliminate the no-shows before they get on the trial list.”
The District Court has struggled with criminal trial backlog for more than a decade.
In 2013, retiring Chief Judge Terry Worthington warned all progress made in addressing the problem would be undone without “significant, ongoing” State Government investment.
Commissioner for Victims’ Rights Michael O’Connell. Picture: Roger Wyman.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Chris Kourakis echoed those concerns, saying funding cuts guaranteed further trial delays and victims being forced to wait longer for justice.
That prompted Mr Rau to warn the courts would lose financial independence if they “pleaded poverty” to protect their “sacred cows”.
Lawyers hoped the proposed $500 million courts redevelopment would help ease the backlog, but the project was terminated earlier this month.
Yesterday, court registrar Phil Hocking said holding eight trials a week was “all we can do” in the face of the backlog, which increases in size every day.
“There are currently 577 criminal matters listed for hearing in the District Court … if they were to proceed, it would take eight judges over 18 months to hear them,” he said.
Mr Hocking said the average District Court trial ran for five days, as compared with an average of 11 days in Victoria.
He said 378 criminal trials went ahead in 2014 while an average of 10 per month did not — meaning they were listed to start but not allocated a judge or courtroom.
He said legislation required the courts list child-sex and organised crime cases first, then matters where a defendant was in custody.
Cases that missed a trial date in deference to those priority cases were the next to be relisted.
“Sometimes, we cannot even provide eight judges in a week to run criminal trials,” he said.
“This is compounded when judges are not replaced when they retire (because) the number of trials listed are partly governed by the number of judges available in any one week.
“If a judge is not replaced for many months, if at all, that means we’ve listed more trials than we should have.”
Mr Hocking said the increasing number of defendants electing to stand trial by judge alone, without a jury, increased the pressure by removing another jurist from the roster.
“After a trial by judge alone, the judge has to write a verdict — that does not occur in a jury trial,” he said.
“This takes time and the judge is expected to write as much of it as possible, as soon as possible, and before commencing another trial.”
He acknowledged not all trials went ahead as planned due to late guilty pleas, witness unavailability or by prosecution and defence mutually seeking an adjournment.
To combat that, registry staff “over-list” the trial calendar with 1.75 trials for each available space so that a back-up case can be called and the time is not wasted.
Mr Rau said “over-listing” symbolised the key problem within criminal justice.
He said his recently proposed, radical overhaul of the system took a “carrot and stick” approach to trial listing.
“You’ll never be able to 100 per cent eliminate no-shows, but you can reduce them by filtering out people who only think about their trial at the last minute,” he said.
“You build carrots and sticks into the system so that, if you go to trial but aren’t ready when your listing comes up, there will be a really bad (sentencing) outcome for you.”
He said the court’s problems would not be solved through increased resources.
“If you did take up this simplistic notion of throwing money at the issue, you will only have more judges on the bench who are missing out on running trials due to no-shows,” he said.
“You’ll just have more empty planes flying from Adelaide to Melbourne, with more seats for which you can never recover the cost.”
Law Society of SA President Rocco Perrotta disagreed, saying lawyers were “vigilant” about ensuring such cases did not reach the trial list.
“The issue of court delays is mostly out of lawyers’ hands and is due to a combination of factors,” he said.
“These include large caseloads, court listing practices, legislative changes and an inefficient committal hearing system, to name a few.”
He said the burden of delay on defendants was emotional as well as financial.
“They will often react with frustration over the news that they will have to wait months, in some cases more than a year, to go to trial,” he said.
“People are spending longer periods of time in custody because of the delay.
“For those on bail, it can be immensely difficult to function in society while you are in a state of limbo and uncertainty.”
Victims’ Rights Commissioner Michael O’Connell said delays left victims feeling undervalued by the justice system.
“Some victims are dismayed and that frustration can boil over into anger … which amplifies the anger they feel for those accused,” he said.
He said any push to reform the criminal justice system must not undercut victims’ rights.
“Expedience in reform for the sake of expedience runs the risk of minimising the harm done to victims (by a criminal act) and dehumanising victims themselves,” he said.
“Victim participation should never be discounted or removed as Parliament and the government struggle to rein in the costs of our state’s criminal justice system.
“SA should demonstrate innovation and creativity in bringing about a victim-centric system, which can be achieved without unduly impacting the rights of the accused.”
A LEGENDARY BACKLOG: THE DISTRICT COURT, BY THE NUMBERS
Court rooms: 25
Court rooms suitable for criminal cases: 10
Court rooms suitable for criminal cases available: 8 per week
Trials* waiting for hearing: 577
Average trial length: 5 days
Number of judges: 18
Judges available to hear criminal cases: 8 per week
Estimated time to clear backlog: 18 months
Trials commenced in 2014 calendar year: 378
Average number of trials commencing: 7.5 per week
Trials “not reached”/did not commence: 10 per month
* statistic includes pre-trial applications and disputed facts hearings
— Source: Courts Administration Authority
