Continuances, continuances, not enough courtrooms and Judges, how will this affect the 10 upcoming homicide trials?

Almost every trial assignment calendar, and the calendar to assign preliminary hearings, there are quite a  few continuances due to not enough courtrooms being available on a regular basis. This just delays the problem down the road.

Cases are sometimes sent to the courtrooms that hear civil cases or family law cases. The Judges that preside over the criminal cases sometimes do jury trials back to back, in additton to their regular workload.

The Judges have to juggle all this with not time waived cases, last minute motions, making sure all the due process is met, prosecutors and defense attorneys are sometimes having multiple cases scheduled in one morning.

Humboldt County has been authorized to have two more Judges but the State needs to provide funding. There are 10 upcoming homicide cases, including two very high profile cases that will have lengthy jury trials; one being the Jason Warren case, the other the Gary Lee Bullock case.

I tried to get in contact with the interim CEO of the Humboldt Superior Court, Mike Tozzi but the email was returned as undeliverable. Hopefully, someone will read the blog and pass him the information. One of the changes Mr. Tozzi could implement since he received an award for running Stanislaus County is that other Superior Courts have emails listed for court administration, why don;t we?

So, if you have a beef why a case is taking so long, look to the state that has cut funding which results in shorter hours at the clerk's office and creates the backlog above. And an overworked staff. We deserve those two Judges, and we needed them not yesterday, but more like months ago, years ago.

Humboldt needs to stop being the step child of California and the State needs to put some money instead of passing more laws that create gridlock.