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August 8, 2006 |
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 PETER
GILCHRISTDISTRICT ATTORNEY By Henry Bostic Mecklenburg County's long-serving District Attorney Peter Gilchrist told Charlotte Rotary Club members that North Carolina's General Assembly continues to starve the state's criminal justice system and that the inadequate funding not only undermines the court system's ability to do an adequate job, but costs local taxpayers millions to pay the added expenses of housing pre-trial inmates. The results of the state's long-term under funding, said Gilchrist, are inadequate staffing, pay and technology throughout the court system which have led to a backlog of pending cases that cost Mecklenburg County $64 million a year to house pre-trial inmates in local jails. The state's total budget in Mecklenburg County for prosecutors, judges, clerk of court and defense of indigents is only $20 million. Mecklenburg County Commissioners built a new 1,000-bed pre-trial jail across from the county court house in 2000 that was to handle the anticipated inmate population through 2005. An annex with another 900 beds was added in 2004. Yet, the Charlotte native said, "the sheriff tells me he averaged 1,589 inmates in Jail Central in July and that he sometimes have them sleeping on the floor." The county is already seriously considering the possibility of adding another 1,000 beds at an annual cost for debt service alone of an additional $5 to $6 million, Gilchrist said. "The County Commissioners are concerned and rightly so." Even with the exception of a slight bump in funding by the General Assembly in the current short session, state funding for the courts has been inadequate for many years. Prospects don't look good for any significant reversal of that trend, Gilchrist said. Last year, Mecklenburg County had 220,000 filings in its criminal courts. "It's staggering what we have to deal with," said the Duke Law School alumnus who's been the county's DA since 1975 and has witnessed the combined effect of Mecklenburg's rapid growth and state under funding. "Mecklenburg is not unique," he said, "but the General Assembly has not supported us in a way that we can effectively deal with the problems we have." He noted that there are inmates in the county jail facing murder charges who have been awaiting trial for more than two years. Although the court system is a state government responsibility, Mecklenburg County Commissioners have pitched in an additional $1 million to Gilchrist's budget because it's cheaper to help him speed the disposition of cases than it is to pay for housing inmates at $110 per day. The same problems affect civil courts where lack of funding delays child custody, divorce, domestic violence and business cases, he pointed out. Mecklenburg had 20,000 new traffic cases last year, Gilchrest said. "We now kill as many in traffic accidents as there are murders so traffic enforcement is important, very important." Gilchrest said that natives and long-term residents tend to think of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County as "they were" not as "they are today." He pointed out that when he went to work with the criminal justice system in 1968, what is now the state district courts were "recorders courts" and were operated by the city and the county. He was the only assistant DA working with Judge Willard Gatlin in what was then juvenile and domestic court. The two handled all the cases with less caseload than any one of his assistants has today. Gilchrest has five assistant DAs working juvenile cases and thee handling domestic violence. "There were 5,000 domestic violence cases last year," he said, "all sorts of juvenile crimes and violence" including murder, rape, and armed robbery. The lack of staffing affects not only the DA's office but judges and the clerk of court. Adding one or two positions to the clerk's office helps little with the growth the county continues to experience, the DA said. Gilchrest also said the General Assembly insists on continuing to pass line-item budgets for the court system, effectively preventing flexibility in the use of what funding the system does get. He said inadequate pay starts at the top of North Carolina's court system and has a rolling effect throughout as pay for others is determined by the salary of the state's chief justice who makes only $130,000 a year. "Young attorneys right out of law school make more than that with the large law firms in the city," he said. Low pay deters many from careers in the criminal justice system and leads to excessive turnover, which is currently 20 percent among the county's assistant DAs. Inadequate technology is another serious shortcoming resulting from under funding, he said. None of the various police and court systems talk to each other. "No business could operate the way we have to," he said. For example, Gilchrist said that police records are digitized. Yet, to meet disclosure requirements, he must pay staff members to copy thousands and thousands of pages of documents for defense attorneys because the courts cannot send the digitized records to attorneys for defendants. The way the General Assembly is currently funding criminal justice in the state "doesn't trend toward a healthy situation," Gilchrist said in an understatement, pointing out that North Carolina is 48th out of the 50 states in court funding per capita. He urged Rotarians to carry the message to state legislators to improve funding for the state's criminal just system. Head Table: Tom Cottingham, Todd Owens, Luther Moore, Mac McCarley, Sam Woodard, Pender McElroy; Invocation: Pam Daigle Visitors & Guests: Bill Meanor; Song: Alan Barnhardt; Piano: Thomas Moore
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Revised: January 24, 2008.