Phila. courts moving in the right direction

Seth Williams

is the district attorney of Philadelphia

Last week, something new and hopeful happened in Philadelphia: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court started the process of improving our court system to better serve the citizens of this city. The court issued a series of orders that will help protect victims and witnesses of crime from unnecessary and unfair delays - delays that too often have led to the dismissal of charges before they could ever reach trial.

The changes were formulated by Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, who once served as Philadelphia district attorney, in conjunction with Justice Seamus McCaffery, the former city Municipal Court judge who has been designated by the chief justice to help spearhead reform efforts. In addition to their own decades of experience, they consulted with representatives from every side of the justice system, meeting with judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers before issuing their initial orders.

The justices have responded quickly to the call to action that came out of reporting on the city's broken court system. In an Inquirer series published at the end of 2009, reporters detailed the ways in which customary practices in Municipal Court caused thousands of cases to be thrown out on grounds that had nothing to do with the evidence. Fifty-nine percent of all felony cases here are thrown out at the preliminary hearing stage, because the hearings never went on. Of the 40 largest urban areas, our city has the lowest conviction rate. Philadelphians deserve better.

With last week's orders, the Supreme Court has taken up the challenge of rethinking some outmoded conventions.

Until now, for example, criminal defendants who decided not to show up for court generally got a free pass - their cases were just automatically continued, forcing victims and witnesses to interrupt their lives over and over again to return to court. There is no sense in that.

Until now, hearings were scheduled for as little as three days after the crime - before the victim or witness could even receive notice in the mail of where and when to appear. There is no sense in that.

And until now, lawyers could engineer continuances by essentially playing cat and mouse - waiting to see if victims and witnesses were able to appear, and only then announcing whether they themselves were ready to proceed. There is no sense in that either.

This first round of court-ordered reforms will end these practices. They are not about being "pro-prosecution" or "anti-defendant." They are just about getting the justice job done. They will not "flood" the courts with more trials. The less time we waste with continuance after continuance, the more time we will have for the real work of the justice system.

Of course there is more to do. And as Philadelphia's newly elected district attorney, I am fully prepared to be part of the solution. In addition to the recent court orders, I am making a number of changes in my own "house":

I have revamped the process by which we decide on charges after arrest to ensure that cases are properly investigated and that we charge based on what we can prove, not more or less. Philadelphians demand fairness. They want us to apply the same standard of justice for everyone regardless of your color, neighborhood, title, or who you know. I will not abdicate my responsibility by just charging everyone with everything and letting judges figure it out later. I have doubled the number of prosecutors that review the cases in charging so we will get it right from the start.

I have placed victim-witness coordinators into the charging unit, so that they can start contacting and working with our victims and witnesses at the earliest possible stage of the case.

I am speeding up our processes for turning information over to the defense, so that both sides can move more quickly to trial or, in appropriate cases, to a plea.

I am changing the way we proceed on small marijuana-possession cases. No, this is not decriminalization of pot. Virtually everyone arrested and convicted for possession of small amounts of marijuana will receive the same kind of sentence they would have in the past. We are simply expediting the processing of these cases (there are several thousand a year), so we can focus on more serious crimes. And if you have an illegal gun, or commit a violent crime, watch out - we are coming after you. That is being smart on crime.

I ran for office because I believed the system had problems, and because I believed those problems could be fixed. My hat is off to the Supreme Court and The Inquirer for starting us on the road to reform. The dedicated prosecutors of my office will be working to further these efforts. People said it couldn't be done, not here, not now, but I disagree. I'm betting on Philadelphia.