california courts

Award-Winning Courthouse Closes After Just 4 Years

September 22, 2014 By CCM Staff

Just four years after its opened amid much fanfare, one of California’s most scenic courthouses has become another victim of the state’s justice rationing, slated to close Nov. 3. A Plumas County News report quotes Plumas Superior Court Executive Officer Deborah Norrie saying that “… the trial courts have lost a billion dollars (in funding) in the last few years. The Plumas court has taken its fair share of hits.”

Known for its award winning design, Portola Courthouse is facing closure.

Plumas County, a Sierra Nevada community located near the Nevada border in northwestern California, has now lost three of its four court facilities, the newspaper noted, with the Greenville court closing in 2012 and Chester’s court closing last year. All cases in Plumas County will now be processed and heard at the Quincy courthouse, but with reduced court hours. The paper reported that, beginning Nov. 3, the court will be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Phones will be answered from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Portola courthouse won design awards and looks more like a ski area entrance than a traditional court building. It is owned by the state judicial system and it remains unclear what, if anything, will be done with the 6,500 square foot building. Local judges say they hope it reopens as a courthouse when funding is restored.

Budget cuts force closure of Portola courthouse

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, California, California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, California Superior Court, Chief Justice, civil court, Civil Courts, court rationing, Plumas County, Sierra Nevada

Court Budget Group Punts On Alternative Allocation

September 18, 2014 By CCM Staff

Despite a looming $22.7 million revenue shortfall, the state’s Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee, or TCBAC, will decline to offer an “alternative recommendation” on how funds are allocated to California courts, according to The Courthouse News Service. The CN report adds that “… deftly bypassed the option to revisit the original four allocation options. Instead, members narrowed their focus to the two pro-rata 2014-15 base allocation scenarios. Adoption of the second scenario means a 2 percent increase for San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Tehama, and Tulare counties over the first scenario.”

The news service also noted that “… the meeting was only the second afforded public access after Gov. Brown axed a provision initiated by the state Legislature earlier this year to open up all of the council’s advisory committee and subcommittee meetings.”

L.A. Looks To Bypass Courts For Low-Level Crimes

September 9, 2014 By CCM Staff

Worried that charging people with “lower level” crimes like public urination is more trouble than it’s worth in a crowded court system, Los Angeles officials are planning to bypass judges and create an alternative justice system for dozens of infractions. the L.A. Register newspaper reports that the Administrative Code Enforcement, or ACE, program would be rolled out first with Los Angeles Animal Services and Police Department and “.. won’t replace the city’s current system of being able to charge people with a misdemeanor or infraction in criminal court. But the program will give police the option of issuing an administrative ticket for low-level offenses, LAPD told a committee earlier this week.”

Some examples given were tampering with garbage, public urination and defecation, and throwing trash into the L.A. River. The Register says that “… citations would range from $250 for the first violation to $1,000 for a third offense.. The city expects to net $468,000 in the first year, according to an analysis prepared in June by the City Attorney’s Office.”

The system as explained does not allow those cited access to actual courts, but only an administrative review. Read the story here: More tickets? ACE is a new way to punish minor crimes

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California, california court cuts, california courts, civil court, criminal court, LA County Court, Los Angeles, misdemeanor, reducing court load

Immigration ‘Rocket Docket’ Raises Ire In S.F.

September 8, 2014 By CCM Staff

Local officials in San Francisco are raising issues with the Department of Justice “rocket docket” for unaccompanied Central American minors who were caught or surrendered to authorities at the U.S. border. The San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper is reporting that courts are now “… cramming through as many as 50 cases daily.”

“This new docket is dramatically accelerating the pace for the cases of newly arrived, traumatized children and families from Central America,” Robin Goldfaden of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Bay Area wrote in an email to the Bay Guardian. “For many, a wrong decision can mean being sent back to unspeakable harm – brutal beatings, rapes, even death. … But nonprofit legal services providers, already stretched beyond capacity, simply do not have the number of attorneys and other staff required to meet the ever-rising level of need.”

At the Sept. 2 Board of Supervisor’s meeting, one county official proposed a budgetary supplemental to allocate $1.2 million for legal representation for unaccompanied youth being processed in immigration court in the Bay Area. “Under international law, many of these kids would actually qualify as refugees,” said the official. “And many of them have cases that would allow them to be protected by immigration law in the US…”

Read the story here: Kids pushed through immigration court at lightning speed while supes debate legal aid funding | SF Politics

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National, Refugee Children Tagged With: border crisis, budget cuts, california courts, civil court, court backlog, DOJ, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children, Rocket Docket, San Francisco, Seatlle, US Justice Department

S.F. Stepping Up In Border-Child Crisis

September 5, 2014 By CCM Staff

Citing its tradition of being a “Sanctuary City” for immigration, documented or not, San Francisco has become the first California city to provide funding for attorneys representing immigrants facing deportation. The money will go through the nonprofit Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. It’s an important move, in part, because government funding including most federal programs cannot pay for representing immigrants in deportation situations.

Terry Collins of the Associated Press reported that “.. since January, nearly 200 children in San Francisco who entered the country unaccompanied by an adult now have adult sponsors and cases pending in immigration court, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department reported… advocates believe there are hundreds more children who have sought refuge in the city without a sponsor, officials added.”

The AP report also noted that “… the U.S. Justice Department has ordered immigration courts to make cases involving unaccompanied minors entering the country a priority. California has the largest backlog of immigration court cases, followed by Texas and New York, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. While San Francisco is the first Golden State city to offer attorney-focused assistance, the city of New York has a similar program and the state of California is spending several million dollars on the issue.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: border crisis, budget cuts, california courts, civil court, court backlog, DOJ, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children, San Francisco, US Justice Department

SoCal Civil Court Backlogs With Child Immigration Cases

September 3, 2014 By CCM Staff

Southern California Public Radio has an important new piece on how Los Angeles courts are handling the immigration crisis of unaccompanied Central American children. Reporter Dorian Merina quotes one judge noting that “… other federal judges hear about 500-600 cases a year” while typical immigration judges in L.A. hear three times as many, or up to 1,600 on average.

The judge explains that the situation “.. has led to an historic backlog of cases in the immigration court system nationwide” and that there are about 375,000 pending cases as of June this year, the highest it’s ever been, according to government enforcement.

The report also addresses the issue of legal representation, saying that “… of the 7,729 juvenile cases currently in the L.A. courts, just under half, or 3,516, face proceedings without a lawyer, according to TRAC data. (Unlike criminal cases, immigration courts are considered administrative hearings and attorneys are encouraged, but not guaranteed.)”

It’s a troubling report from the nation’s largest immigration court: LA’s immigration courts overwhelmed by child migrant cases

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, Refugee Children Tagged With: border crisis, budget cuts, california courts, civil court, court backlog, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children

L.A. Moves To Disassemble Part Of ‘School-To-Prison Pipeline’

August 20, 2014 By CCM Staff

As the nation watches racially heated events in Ferguson, Missouri unfold, the city of Los Angeles is going about disassembling what critics have called its “schools-to-prison” pipeline, ending policies that turned school issues into police issues. But the move is also a consequence of reduced juvenile court capacity, according to an official quoted in a New York Times article.

According to the NYT: “Michael Nash, the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Juvenile Courts, who was involved in creating the new policies, said that the juvenile justice system was overtaxed, and that the changes would ensure that the courts were dealing only with youngsters who ‘really pose the greatest risk to the community.'”

The NYT also reported that “… students 14 years old and under received more than 45 percent of the district’s 1,360 citations in 2013, according to the [Labor/Community] Strategy Center [a civil rights group] African-American students, who account for about 10 percent of the total population, received 39 percent of “disturbing the peace” citations, typically given for fights.” At one time, police in the program were issuing arrest citations for showing up late to school, a practice terminated in 2012.

Read the NY Times story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California Corrections, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, Civil Courts, court rationing, criminal justice system, juvenile court, juvenile detention, LA County Juvenile Court, Los Angeles courts, Los Angeles School System, minorities, school reform, school to prison pipeline

Rich Sue, Poor Don’t In Downsized Courts

August 19, 2014 By CCM Staff

Under the downsized and more expensive California court systems, officials are reporting that some types of cases like probate, mental health, dependency, personal injury, property damage, and wrongful death claims continue increasing. But public-access civil cases like small claims, where there’s no attorney involved, are decreasing.

In a solid story from The Reporter newspaper in Vacaville, a Sacramento-area community in Solano County, we learn that “… in a statement issued along with a summary of the report, Justice Douglas Miller, chair of the Judicial Council’s Executive and Planning Committee, called the trend in court filings worrisome [saying] “… it coincides with two other trends that have occurred as result of budget cuts to the judicial branch: the increase in court filing fees to offset General Fund budget cuts and closure of courthouses and/or the reduction of hours at our courthouses. It’s something that we in the judicial branch are very concerned about,” Miller said in a statement.

One concern is that, with diminished hours, increased costs and the challenge of traveling to farther-away court houses, that people who would have normally turned to courts would simply give up. The report can certainly be read to support that claim.

See the story here: Decrease in court filings, rise in costs a concern to court officials

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, California, California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, civil court, Civil Courts, court rationing, justice denied, Justice Rationing

‘Rocket Dockets’ Set For Border-Children Immigration

August 13, 2014 By CCM Staff

The federal government is creating “rocket dockets” to process unaccompanied border children, hoping to slow the flow of children by showing a policy of quick returns. Critics are responding that the new practice moves too quickly in a system inadequate to provide legally required court oversight and without a system for legal representation.

The U.K.-based Guardian newspaper has a good overview, reporting that “.. under normal rules, the recent arrivals would have queued at the tail-end of a backlogged system where migrants wait months or years for hearings at overstretched immigration courts… instead, with Republicans accusing the president of neglecting border security, the administration vaulted the newly arrived children to the front of the line, and said they would have initial court hearings within 21 days.”

They also cite a California-based critic: “We appreciate the government’s attempt to deal with these [new] cases expeditiously, but not to this extreme. We think 21 days is too fast. Maybe 60 days would be preferable,” said Caitlin Sanderson, director of the Los Angeles-based Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, which has staff attorneys representing about 270 children pro bono.

See the story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: border crisis, california courts, civil court backlog, Civil Courts, deportation, Immigrant Children, immigration, immigration reform, refugee children, The Guardian

L.A. Court Houses Nix Direct News Distribution

August 11, 2014 By CCM Staff

News organizations are crying foul after the Los Angeles Superior Court began enforcing an order banning most direct-distribution print products from its courthouses. Among them is at least one who finds the move comes suspiciously close to an article he published with political implication.

James Preston Allen, publisher of L.A. County-based Random Lenghts News and a contributor to this website and our print editions, says that his newspaper “… is not the only publication that is targeted by this General Order. All publications are being targeted unless the publication is sanctioned as acceptable by a third party vendor inside the courthouse. So now, our press freedoms are being adjudicated by a commercial vendor?”

The publisher also contends that the order singles out printed material: “With the advent of WiFi access at many courthouses and the universal availability of the Internet on any smartphone, this General Order is impossible to enforce, yet the presiding Judge David S. Wesley, insists upon enforcing it on traditional press distribution methods and other forms of protected speech such as newspapers, flyers and people demonstrating.

He noted that the eviction letter from the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Executive Officer Clerk Sherri R. Carter came “… just a few days after our past front page story ran, ‘Stop Or We’ll Shoot’ (July 11-24, 2014 Rln). This story challenged the use of force policy at the Long Beach Police Department, whose chief, Jim McDonnell, now is running for Los Angeles County Sheriff.”

Allen notes that his newspapers are not actually distributed in a courthouse since his local one closed last year. Read his story via City Watch here: Censorship Exposed! At LA’s Superior Courts

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: california courts, censorship, First Amendment, freedom of the press, LA Courts, press