Cooke County Citizens for Better Government
Do we have a Backlog in District Court and What Does it Cost Us?
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Janelle Haverkamp has repeatedly denied there is a Backlog in "her" District Court and accused her opponent Martin Peterson of distorting her record.  Her mailers and ads claim the backlog is down for the calendar year of 2007.  That is true, her backlog did go down slightly for the calendar year of 2007.  What is the rest of the story?
 
The District Court backlog has grown substantially, by 221 cases, even including calendar year 2007, since Judge Haverkamp took office.  She told me she felt she shouldn't have an opponent since she was doing a good job.  It appears once she realized she had an opponent and her growing backlog would be an issue, she started working it aggressively so she could claim it was down.  If you pick a narrow window of time, she is correct but that isn't the whole picture.
 
I looked at another set of reports from the Texas Office of Court Administration regarding the age of cases disposed, (resolved or finished for us non-lawyers), I saw that Judge Haverkamp's court is much slower on criminal cases than the state average.  The state measures how long it takes to resolve criminal cases.  They must consider cases old after 120 days as that is the oldest measurement they take.  Her court has 40% more cases older than 120 days than the state average.  That is with the help of a visiting judge who has heard more jury trials than she has in the past three years.  The taxpayers have paid close to $100,000 to pay for that judge to help her.
 
If a Judge is responsible for getting to the truth in her court, should she tell the truth when campaigning?  The truth is Martin Peterson was telling the truth that her backlog had grown.  In fact the state showed it had grown even for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007. 
 
The Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 5(1) (ii) states: "A judge or judicial candidate shall not:  knowingly or recklessly misrepresent the identity, qualifications, present position, or other fact concerning the candidate or an opponent;"
 
I believe she may have violated this section and Canon 1 that states: "A judge should participate in establishing, maintaining and enforcing high standards of conduct, and should personally observe those standards so that the integrity and independence of the judiciary is preserved."
 
Do her statements that Martin Peterson is distorting her record and that she has no backlog preserve the "integrity ... of the judiciary"?
 
Below is more detail on her backlog with links to the state web site so you can see for yourself, rather than take my word for it that she has indeed had a growing backlog and that her criminal docket is one of the slower ones in the state.  That slow criminal docket and her former performance as District Attorney which forced us into building a new jail at an additional cost of $1,600,000 a year in Cooke County Taxes.  I submit if she had just an average efficiency in her court, the old jail would have been large enough. 
 
That $1,600,000 in taxes a year translates into $260 in additional taxes over four years for a homeowner with a $100,000 home. 
 
Do you want to pay an extra $260 in taxes so we can keep Judge Haverkamp on the bench for four more years?  I don't.

Judge Janelle Haverkamp has been very aggressive in defending her record as Judge and criticizing her opponent, Martin Peterson.  Unfortunately, she is using selective facts to try and discredit her opponent's assertions when the big picture and facts are that he is telling the truth about her growing backlog, at least until about the time she learned she had an opponent.
 
She talks about how she disposed of more cases in 2007 than came in.  She is correct in that analysis if she is talking about the calendar year vs. the fiscal year by a small margin.  However, her backlog has increased since she took office on January 1, 2005 by 221 cases.  In the three years ending on December 31, 2007, the number of pending cases in her court rose from 1389 to 1610. 
 
I'm pretty sure that is an increase in her backlog. 
 
That backlog increase is with the help of a visiting/retired judge who taxpayers paid tens of thousands of tax dollars to.  How many extra tens of thousands of tax dollars did the District Attorney get for extra staff to handle the extra workload.  If memory serves me, the answer is less than 1.
 
Yet she has publicly, repeatedly stated that Mr. Peterson is distorting her record and there is no backlog in her court.    She said at the League of Women voters to ask yourselves who is telling the truth.  It appears her statement that there is no backlog may not be accurate.   Click the following link to see the report I pulled from the State:
 
 
When I first pulled the standard reports from the Texas Office of Court Administration web site, Judge Haverkamp's backlog had increased for the fiscal year ending in September 2007.  Perhaps once she got an opponent that focused on the growth of her backlog, she started to work to reduce her backlog in the last three months of 2007 so she could find a time to emphasize where her backlog grew smaller.  I guess that is the problem with statistics, they can be manipulated if you pick a narrow sampling of data.
 
You don't have to take my word that her backlog has increased since she took office.  You can pull your own reports at the Texas Office of Court Administration Web Site:
 
 
In looking at the Texas Office of Court Administration Reports on the age of disposed cases, (those that have been dismissed or completed), Cooke County has a very high percentage of criminal cases that are in the oldest category of more than 120 days.  For the three years Judge Haverkamp has been on the bench, through December 31, 2007, it appears 68% of the criminal cases take more than 120 days to resolve compared to the state average of 49%.  That means we have about 40% more cases that reach the maximum age tracked by the state than the average District Court has.  This is when we had a visiting/retired judge helping Judge Haverkamp for the last three years at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.
 
 
If an average is a score of C in school, what does 40% worse than the average equate to?  Should we assess a D or F to Judge Haverkamp? 
 
Judge Haverkamp has said repeatedly there is no backlog in her court.  Perhaps the reason it isn't getting better is she is believing her own campaign rhetoric.  It seems if you don't recognize a problem, it is hard to fix it.  She may not see it but denying it won't make it go away.  Facts can be stubborn, especially when compiled objectively by the State of Texas.  Check out the report links and scroll down to Cooke County for criminal cases on the right.
 
When Judge Haverkamp was District Attorney prosecuting criminal cases, the number of cases that went over 120 days was 67% from 2001 - 2004, compared to the state average of 48% during that time.  
 
 
It looks like Judge Janelle Haverkamp has been consistent, if not efficient. 
 
Why is this important?  Delays in criminal cases cause additional expenses to house prisoners in jail.  If they get out on bond, they may be out committing more crimes while awaiting trial.  Delays also result in higher attorney fees for Indigent Defense.  Cooke County taxpayers pay one of the highest per capita rates in local tax dollars for Indigent Defense.  Beyond the inefficiencies of our court, part of the reason our Indigent Defense costs are so high is attorneys get paid by the hour rather than the case.  Many of the Judges around us set a fixed amount or at least a guideline for what they will pay for each type of case, depending on the seriousness of the offense and whether it is plea-bargained or goes to trial.  This approach usually saves the taxpayers money as the lawyer is less inclined to file frivolous motions and drag out proceedings since there may not be any money in it for them.
 
Why did we have to spend $10,000,000 a few years ago on a new jail?  It was because we were over-flowing with prisoners and having to pay other counties to house them.  If we had a more efficient District Court with criminal cases at or below the State's average time to dispose of a case, we may have been able to get by with the old jail and saved $1,000,000 a year or more in county property taxes.  Keep in mind that if we could just achieve average efficiency in our District Court, we might have 40% less prisoners in jail awaiting trial.  Wouldn't that be nice.
 
Ken King said he could make our court more efficient if we had elected him in 2004.  He said we wouldn't need a new jail if we increased the efficiency of our District Court.  Unfortunately he barely lost after a bitter and highly contested election.  I wonder how many millions of tax dollars he could have saved us if he had gotten elected.
 
Now we have a new challenger saying similar things.  Judge Haverkamp criticizes him almost as strongly as she did Ken King for the same idea to increase efficiency when he ran.  Is there some reason we can't be at least average in efficiency compared to the rest of the state?  Could the reason be Judge Haverkamp since the idea keeps coming up and she is the common thread through all of this.
 
An efficient court system results in speedier justice and lower costs to litigants.  Is that a bad idea?  Let's not wait four more years.  Maybe it's time for Judge Haverkamp to get a job in the real world and see if we can find someone with broader experience to make our District Court efficient.
 
Please vote for Martin Peterson, the People's Judge on March 4, 2008.

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