Even if courts across Southeast Tennessee resume criminal trials in July as planned, the docket backup created by the novel coronavirus pandemic could hamper operations for months.
It’s not just criminal trials that were planned this spring that must be rescheduled. Most criminal cases investigated since the Tennessee Supreme Court started limiting operations in mid-March are also now part of a growing backlog.
So far, the backup in the rural Chattanooga region now includes criminal cases that haven’t yet gone before grand juries, motions hearings that require several people to be present in courtrooms and all the misdemeanor citations issued instead of a trip to jail that get dates in general sessions courts, prosecutors say.
Court officials across the region also say, however, that early efforts to avoid making all but the most necessary arrests and to work to resolve existing cases without trial have helped the situation.
Tenth Judicial District Attorney General Stephen Crump said justice system and law enforcement officials who discussed the issue in a Zoom meeting on April 29 agree “it’s going to be a significant problem.”