MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – As jury trials resume Monday after the traditional summer hiatus, tensions remain simmering between Mobile County’s top judge and its chief prosecutor.
The dispute basically boils down to this: Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich thinks the judges were too cautious during the pandemic and haven’t worked hard enough to get back to normal.
At one time, according to Rich, the court system had a backup of more than 10,000 cases because of the COVID-19 slowdown. She told FOX10 News that it has been whittled down about 25 percent.
“We’re still only going to trial on Mondays,” she said. “Judges don’t set trials on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays anymore.”
Not true, said Presiding Circuit Judge Michael Youngpeter.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he told FOX10 News. “We are setting the same number of jury trials each week that we have always set. The difference is we used to, at times, set some on Monday, some on Tuesday, some on Wednesday.”
Now, Judge Youngpeter said, cases set for Monday that are not tried that day can be tried later in the week. He said he does not believe the backlog is dramatically out of the ordinary.
“I mean, I’ve got over 400 criminal cases,” he said. “I had darn near that many when I took the bench 15 years ago.”
Youngpeter said the court system got a lot done even during the pandemic.
“We didn’t just show down,” he said. “This seems like the narrative. … We’re not that bad.”
Rich disagreed.
“We are not anywhere near coming out from underneath COVID,” she said.
Rich said she wishes the summer break had been canceled this year.
“If there was any summer that we needed to be working, it was this summer,” she said. “But he sets the trial schedule. And we have no control over the trial scheduled that he sets.”
Jury trials start back up again on Monday after the traditional summer break. DA Rich says she wishes that break had been canceled this year.
But Youngpeter said the break is needed, both because so many potential jurors are on vacation and because courthouse workers need a breather. He noted that he presided over 15 trials in the spring.
“It’s just so much harder while school is out to get jurors to come in,” he said. “I mean, it’s a natural time to take a break, and a break is needed for all of us. Our staff, our court administration’s staff, is exhausted by the end of a jury term.”
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