GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — As of March 31, 2020, Guilford County had 35,717 pending district court criminal cases. That was before the pandemic. As of March 31, 2021, the numbers are back up at 58,301 cases.
Guilford County District Attorney Avery Crump said they had to keep continuing cases because they couldn't get everyone into the courts during the pandemic.
"It's a hard cycle right now," Crump said. "You're never going to get back to where you were. It's kind of impossible at this point."
Crump said the pandemic impacted the courts in a big way. She also said Guilford County isn't the only courthouse dealing with a big backlog.
"It was devastating, I mean it was horrible," Crump said. "We were doing what we could do, but you have to remember that Guilford County is the third-largest county in the state. And we normally deal with a lot of cases."
Crump said at first, they were only allowed to do 100 cases a day.
"On an average day we could have anything in criminal district courts, we could have anything, from 400 to 600 defendants," Crump said. "So, when you have to modify that down to 100 cases, that's not doing a lot. Please understand that doesn’t mean 100 individuals or defendants, but 100 cases, meaning that one person could have 10 cases.”
Crump said because of the modifications, she doesn't know if they will ever catch up with their backlog.
"Realistically, we'll try to make a dent but it's impossible because we're still not even at 50% and cases are still coming in," Crump said.
Crump said explaining to those still waiting for their day in court, is frustrating all around. And when it comes to new cases, it might be a while before they are heard.
"We've had people waiting for trial since 2019, 2018, and as you know the homicide rate is going on up," Crump said. "Well those new cases, they are going to have to wait years because you still have to get through the old cases."
Crump said they are only working 200 cases a day because the courts are still not operating at 100% yet.
“I can’t tell you when we’re going to get up to 100% and we probably never will," Crump said. "Unless you have extra judges and extra courtrooms, which we don’t have, then you still can’t move all of those cases."
Even though Crump doesn't think they will be able to catch back up with the backlog, they are trying.
"We're trying to do everything that we can to make sure people have their day in court," Crump said. "Not just the individual that are charged but also your victims."
Another challenge was trying not to overcrowd the jails while people waited for a court date. One way Crump tried to handle that was consenting to an unsecured bond for non-violent offenders.
"If a magistrate set a bond for $1,000 or less than we consented to that bond being unsecured because we didn't want the jails to pile up and have COVID run rampant through the jails," Crump said.
One thing Crump wants the community to know is they never stopped working even when the courts weren't in session.
“I want the community to know that the DA's Office, we have been working tirelessly to move these cases," Crump said. "We had two shutdowns when the courthouse was shut down, that is the only time my office was shut down, otherwise, we were open we were working."