Family members of the victims in the Jason Warren request Judicial Council action after they learn no Judge has been assigned and there may be another postponement

This post I did on 8/17 is already having an impact and the family members in the Jason Warren case are doing something about it. , I will be following up with him and the Judicial Council regarding the letter from family members of the alleged victims in the Jason Warren case. They cannot comment about the case due to the gag order but they can address what they are doing about the two Judges Humboldt County has been authorized for because this will impact the upcoming homicides and other cases.

Yesterday, I was contacted by Dorothy Ulrich's mother, Shirley Ortega. She is in Humboldt County now and was hoping to attend the jury trial for Jason Warren, the man charged with killing her daughter. There has been continuance after continuance. Ms. Ortega was travelling from Washington and was not able to sign the letter available mentioned below.

The letter signed by Hank Seemann, Jessie Hunt and Terri-Vroman-Little dated August 21, 2015 was sent to Humboldt County Superior Court Interim CEO Mike Tozzi, DA Maggie Fleming, Holly Hensher, from Victim Witness, and two Judicial Council officers, Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Martin Hoshino.

It refers to the Jason Warren case and the current scheduled trial date of September 14, in the letter they state that "we understand that a Judge has not been assigned for this case and there is substantial risk for postponement of the trial until 2016 due to lack of an unavailable judge in Humboldt County."

They ask that all possible options be explored with the Judicial Council to secure an available judge from a neighboring county or a travelling judge.

They talk about the fact that the case has had numerous delays and the impact it has had on their families. The three year anniversary is coming up. Ms. Ortega told me that she had to move her family to Washington and has to make travel plans to come down for the trial and the case keeps getting continued. Other family members of the other alleged victims are in a similar dilemma. Ms. Ortega acknowledged that while most of the delays were under former DA Paul Gallegos, the families are frustrated with the current situation. As mentioned in the letter, there are afraid more delays will be detrimental to testimony and evidence such as witnesses leaving the area. This will impact more than just the families in this case and that is one of the reasons, Mrs. Ortega contacted me. She said family members of the other victims are aware that she was going to contact me.

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 addition 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.