Cranking up the caseload

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Gale Cook works hard. She's the commonwealth attorney for Kentucky's 42nd judicial circuit, made up of Calloway and Marshall counties in Western Kentucky. She's also head of the state's Commonwealth Attorneys Association. More than a few cases cross her desk each week.

"For the last three years, we were averaging 435 felony indictments per year," she says. Split with one assistant, that's 217 (or 218, depending on your math) cases per attorney.

Cook says Dave Stengel, her counterpart in Jefferson County, has assistants working between 75 and 100 cases a year. And many of those attorneys are focused exclusively on prosecuting drug crimes or child sex abuse.

Cook's office, like Stengel's, must handle each and every case filed in her circuit. She says she's got to stay vigilant when checking up on court-ordered restitution payments, working with police to help assure their investigations remain above board and presenting cases to grand juries and advising those juries on the substance of the law.

But over her shoulder is the knowledge that the workload, this year, is getting worse.

"In the first six months of this year, we have returned 311 indictments," she says. "If we continue at the rate we're going, we'll hit 600 indictments this year."

Cook estimates, at a 40-hour workweek, that works out to about 6.9 hours per felony. But she doesn't work 40 hours a week. It's at least 60 and sometimes 90 hours a week to get the job done. She knows she does a good job for her judicial circuit, but ends her days very tired. Cook says "very possibly" a time will come when all she's got simply won't be enough to do the job.

The title of "Most Overworked Public Servant" is hotly contested.

Ernie Lewis, Kentucky's Public Advocate, says the public defenders he oversees grapple with towering caseloads admirably. Cook's office may end the year with 300 new cases per attorney. Kentucky's public defenders could average 500.

"Since I've been public advocate, since 1996, we have not had caseloads that were at a level that meet national standards," Lewis says.

Statewide criminal circuit court filings in fiscal 2004 were almost 50-percent higher than 1996 levels. Manpower and funding have not kept pace for a variety of reasons. Cook says, in light of tight budgets, the strategy for dealing with state government budget cutters has been simply, "Please don't cut us."

Cut and run

With two consecutive state budgets delayed over disputes between the governor and the General Assembly, including a budget that should currently be governing state spending, prosecutors continue to feel the squeeze.

The result for Gale Cook is working the occasional 90-hour week. For Ernie Lewis, it means accepting a different, but equally harsh reality, the possibility that defendants under the counsel of his office may plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.

Plea deals are a healthy part of the legal process, Lewis says, but "the caseload problem encourages plea negotiations." Some cases, he says, end up in a plea deal when a trial is justified. But the hours involved for both the public defender and the prosecutor may make a jury trial virtually impossible. That leads Lewis to his "greatest fear" as head of the public defender system, "people are ending up entering a guilty plea when they are in fact not guilty of what they're charged with."

Towering caseloads for both sides, he says, creates "an immense incentive to resolve the case with a guilty plea."

Things aren't (that) tough all over

Linda Talley Smith, Commonwealth attorney for Boone and Gallatin counties in Northern Kentucky, says the spending freeze instituted across state government in December kept Commonwealth attorneys from adding new staff. Smith had to get a special exemption to even replace an assistant attorney who took a maternity leave.

Smith's judicial circuit leads the state in filings and closings, each numbering more than 2,000 in the last fiscal year.

In the first half of this year, Smith's office received 385 felony indictments. She says the numbers have been increasing "at about 27 and a half percent every year" since she took office in 1997.

But Smith isn't quite pulling her hair out. Her relatively urban circuit has been growing in population at about the same rate as felony indictments. New poplulation in her circuit may be helpful when she has to justify a bigger staff budget. It will also help when her circuit attempts to get another judge to handle the cases.

And to handle a similar number of felonies as Gale Cook in western Kentucky, she's got more than twice the staff. She's got three full time attorneys and three part timers in her office, not to mention five law school interns from Nortern Kentucky University that she "couldn't get by without."

The crimes are also different. As the commerce hub of Northern Kentucky, Boone county's crime increase has more to do with felony theft and bad checks than illicit drugs and murder.

Gale Cook and many other rural prosecutors can sum up the caseload problem in a word: meth.

The problem

Cook says methamphetamine cases, virtually non-existent less than 10 years ago, have "inundated" her office. Cases involving hard drugs in one way or another have made up most of the increase. As much as 80-percent of the increase is attributed to hard drugs. Most of those cases deal specifically with meth. And for those who don't have meth listed in the charges, the cases related to meth are growing, as well. Cook has seen youth burglary rings in which young people trade their stolen wares, often guns, for methamphetamine.

The meth trade is becoming more sophisticated as it grows.

"Through extensive investigations and interviews, what we've found is that we have organized crime here," Cook says. "We have enforcers. We have meth manufacturers that sell to middle-level distributors. It's organized crime."

Meth cases also constitute a rapidly growing share of criminal filings in circuit court.

A selection of circuit court cases specifically dealing with meth (see chart) in Calloway and Marshall counties has quadrupled from 1999 through 2004 fiscal years. Statewide, the same types of cases have more than quintupled. Criminal circuit filings overall have not grown at nearly the same rate.

Easing the burden

"The needs of prosecutors have long not been addressed by the General Assembly," says Attorney General Greg Stumbo. "As the legisiatlve body enacted more criminal sanctions, cases became more complex and more voluminous."

In Stumbo's 24 years in the General Assembly, he says he was "as guilty as any" legislator when it came to voting to criminalize more behavior.

"Sitting there enacting those laws," he says, "I didn't see the impact it had on the prosecutorial and the public defender systems."

But the time for Stumbo to do something about that is gone. Now, as Kentucky's highest ranking law enforcment officer, he has to enforce the law, not make it.

Stumbo's office is largely responsible for divvying up money to commonwealth attorneys statewide and says he's well aware of the drug problem in rural areas.

Stumbo says the caseload problem "is particularly exacerbated by all of these drug roundups going on right now."

Stumbo would like to establish regional extensions of the Attorney General's Office to offer investigators and prosecutors to help handle large drug cases on an as-needed basis.

He'd also like to expand "rocket dockets" to more portions of the state. Those dockets help identify cases most likely to enter plea agreements and get defendants into those plea agreements as soon as possible.

"There are 18 new jurisdictions that we have convinced to try this particlar program out," Stumbo says. "At the end of a year we'll look at what they're doing and what we can do."

The high cost of the legal system amid rapidly increasing drug crime isn't lost on Steve Pence, Kentucky's Justice Cabinet secretary and lieutenant governor. His drug summit earlier this year was aimed precisely at taking stock of Kentucky's existing drug-fighting resources.

Stumbo was among those making recommendations alongside Pence. Stumbo's particular hope of having prosecutors and investigators at the ready statewide is one of the recommendations put forth at the drug summit under the heading "coordinated prosecution."

Pence's focus since earlier in this year has been to push drug treatment and an expansion of drug court, though he's quick to point out that treatment is just one of three planks of his drug-fighting platform. The others: continued vigorous enforcement and expanded prevention.

Drug court appears to be the linchpin in Pence's plans to divert first offenders out of jail and into treatment, which he says is more effective and less costly than a stint in jail.

Funding drug court, Pence says, could be achieved in small part through assets seized from convicted drug criminals. The summit itself was funded with seized assets.

Hello? Over here!

Ernie Lewis sat on the drug summit's treatment panel. He's encouraged by much of the work done there, but says his caseload problem is still getting worse. Expanded drug court and treatment, he says, would likely help public defenders over the long run.

Lewis's problems are more immediate. A draft of the Public Advocate's annual defender caseloads report obtained by Snitch shows that in fiscal 2004, overall caseloads of public defenders were up 9 percent. Cases going to trial were up 9 percent, a higher growth rate than in years past. Funding per case, conversely, is in decline.

"Federal funds are coming in to create these task forces to arrest more people," Lewis says. "Some of the money is going to hire state prosecutors to prosecute in state court, and we're not going to get any of that funding."

Lewis has spent much of his time as Public Advocate establishing full-time offices for public defenders. Those offices now cover 112 of Kentucky's 120 counties. Eight years ago, when Lewis became Public Advocate, full-time defenders covered just 47 counties.

"Courts and prosecutions and defense need funding parity," Lewis says. "If prosecutors can send in prosecutors for large drug busts, then we need the same ability."

Lewis is quick to point out, however, that he doesn't believe Kentucky's prosecutors are by any means overfunded.

Public defenders' caseloads are 85 percent higher than what Lewis cites as a national standard. He has a familiar refrain that is lately reaching a fever pitch.

"We're at saturation point. We cannot play the role that is expected of us until we get significant new funding."

Old habits die hard

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Nearly three years after 9/11, only frequent fliers seem to know the new rules of flying

Sarah B., by her own description, shows little modesty. SheÌs also a cynical traveler, given to telling friends, "All this security stuff is just to make stupid people feel secure." The Cincinnati native is, however, just modest enough to request that her last name not be included here.

Accustomed to setting off airport screening devices, Sarah can name half a dozen possible culprits when the magnetometer sounds off: her underwire bra, the wire in her jaw installed after surgery, and various other bits of metal on her clothing, including the tiny metal buttons on her jeans. Even her nipple rings set off screening equipment regularly.

But when a friendly airport screener in Cinci discovered SarahÌs chest seemed unusually reactive to the metal wands, Sarah told the woman the nipple rings were the likely culprits.

"She said, 'WeÌre going to have to check that out,' and I said, 'Are you serious?'"

She was.

Sarah was led behind a screen near the checkpoint, where she pulled her low-cut shirt down and showed the woman her piercings. Sarah says she was more annoyed at the inconvenience than at baring her bust to a stranger.

"After that, she patted me down," Sarah said. "She was behind me and she patted me between my breasts, among other places. It really wasnÌt that big of a deal. It probably would have been very upsetting if I had been anyone else. If I'd been in my regular mood, I would have been highly annoyed."

Seasoned business traveller Ranita Jones was annoyed at a security checkpoint when a metal hairpick, tweezers and an extra butane lighter held her up at the Northern Kentucky airport. She gave the extra lighter to her traveling companion and got it back when theyÌd both cleared the screeners. In 26 years of business travel, Jones has seen her property stay behind at security checkpoints only since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

And like many business travelers, Jones has learned dressing for success is getting more difficult.

"ThereÌs no such thing as dressing for business when you fly anymore," Jones says.

So she doesn't. Underwire bras have been replaced with sports bras. Her jewelry and hair barettes stay packed until she arrives at her destination. In short, she's replaced a business suit with a running suit and leaves little more than travel reading in her purse when she passes through security to avoid having to leave items behind.

Items left by travelers add up.

Transit Security Administration screeners at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Internationa Airport collect an average of 100 pounds of questionable property each week.

"It's every single kind of imaginable jackknife, scissors and, for some reason, an amazing number of kitchen knives and paring knives," says Paul Wisniewski, the airportÌs director of federal security. "Ladies often pack fruit on a trip."

Wisniewski says other items that typically fill up bins of the "voluntarily relenquished" include mini-corkscrews with attached mini-knives, multi-tools of several varieties, throwing stars, billy clubs and kubatons.

And guns.

"By now, this fiscal year, weÌve probably had over 500 guns show up at checkpoints around the country," Wisniewski says. Those guns are not voluntarily relenquished to screeners. Police confiscate them in the inevitable criminal investigation.

Buyer pays shipping

Buddy Peterson travels, usually with his wife and children, about twice a year. Since 9/11, heÌs flown in and out of Chicago twice with a keychain-sized Swiss Army knife and a pair of fold-up pliers. The knife was free. The pliers, a stocking stuffer.

"I dropped my keys in the little bucket and they said I couldnÌt fly with the knife and pliers," Peterson says.

His options: take them back to his car, put them in his checked baggage (which was already on the plane), leave them behind or ship them back to himself through the airportÌs mail-back program.

Peterson chose the final option, took his tools down to the customer service desk and got the needed envelope. At a charge of $6 per item, Peterson dropped the envelope in the nearby mailbox.

"What really chapped my ass, I looked at the envelope when we got home and the shipping charge was a dollar twenty-five," he says. "They make it really easy for you to give them your money."

If Peterson had just given up his items and waited a few weeks, he might have seen them avaiable for purchase on eBay from the Kentucky Division of Surplus Property. He might have even saved some money.

The division's eBay identity, "kysurplus," (feedback rating: 135) gets good reviews for its selling practices. User "gpa-termite" recently purchased a six-inch bone carving with intricately cut silhouettes of camels, and wrote, "oughta be illegal to ship so fast and package so well AAAA ++++ thanks."

All auctions conducted by the division include the requirement buyers pay KentuckyÌs 6 percent sales tax.

Airports in Northern Kentucky, Lexington and Louisville turn over hundreds of pounds of confiscated items as surplus every six weeks.

Louisville airport officials confiscate a fairly large number of souvenir bats from the Louisville Slugger plant.

But the division also collects property from BostonÌs Logan Airport and airports in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla.

Jill Midkiff, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Finance Cabinet, says the agency recently received a shipment of 4,800 pounds from Logan and picked up 10,000 pounds of prohibited items on the last trip to Florida.

Those items are sorted into dozens of bins when they arrive in Frankfort. Surplus property sells items to other state agencies so they aren't caught paying retail.

Then the non-profit groups pick over the surplus wares.

"Multi-tools are very popular among Boy Scouts," Midkiff said.

And then, finally, the public gets a crack at some excessively sharp (or blunt) items for sale on the web, sometimes 20 identical Swiss Army knives or Leatherman multi-tools will be sold in the same lot for $40.

And adding up the cash seems to be more difficult than you might think.

Midkiff would not provide hard estimates of revenues from the sale of property turned over by fliers, but says, "Of items sold by the pound ... the average is about $3."

She adds, "We might sell one knife for $60, and we might sell a bucket of scissors for $2."