It could be months or longer before coronavirus-stalled court dockets return to any semblance of normal in Tennessee’s 10th and 12th judicial districts, even after a continuing decline in COVID-19 cases led the Tennessee Supreme Court to ease recent restrictions.
“Our trial dockets are obviously terribly backed up and they will be for the foreseeable future,” 10th Judicial District Attorney General Steve Crump said Monday. “By the time we start trying cases again, it’ll be almost a year [since the last case was tried], actually maybe a little over a year.”
Crump said future trial dockets will be inflated by the backlog of cases as old cases and new ones are shuffled into court schedules.
The 10th Judicial District consists of Bradley, McMinn, Monroe and Polk counties, while the 12th Judicial District includes Bledsoe, Franklin, Grundy, Marion, Sequatchie and Rhea.
In the more rural 12th Judicial District the situation is not as dire, but the backlog of pending trials and felony cases in criminal court will persist on dockets for months at least, District Attorney General Mike Taylor said Monday.