August 3, 2010

Consultant: File charges, then worry about follow-up

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A consultant says he found no “aha” solution to a budget-driven slowdown in the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office.

“A budget cut of the size imposed upon the prosecutor’s office is bound to have serious repercussions, as it appears that it did,” longtime Florida prosecutor Randy McGruther reported.

McGruther, chief assistant state attorney for a five-county Florida judicial circuit, conducted a $5,000 study in May at the request of county commissioners and criminal justice consultant David Bennett.

Commissioners hoped McGruther would find ways to restore flagging efforts to keep offenders out of jail with supervised programs. A promising community corrections system began to unravel last fall when budgets were cut in the sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices.

The system depends heavily on charging suspects within 72 hours – before state law requires them to be released.

Prosecutor Steve Tucker told commissioners he was able to keep up with arrests for a while in 2008 and 2009, but this year’s 11 percent cut in an “already lean” budget overwhelmed him.

McGruther’s report “states the obvious,” Tucker said in a written response last month.

He didn’t participate in a July 20 conference call in which county commissioners discussed the report with McGruther, but Administrative Attorney Debby Kurbitz represented the prosecutor’s office.

Kurbitz, who is part of Tucker’s management team, took exception to McGruther’s recommendation to file charges within 72 hours even when attorneys feel they won’t have time to follow up.

Cases “don’t get any better sitting around,” and it’s unrealistic to wait for a lull, McGruther told Kurbitz.

In his written report, McGruther said there is “little imperative to process these cases” after they are placed on a back burner. Meanwhile, accused felons are released without court-ordered restrictions.

Kurbitz said defense attorneys would realize they have deputy prosecutors over a barrel if all cases were filed in 72 hours. They would start demanding better deals, and the prosecutor’s success rate would fall.

Kurbitz also rejected McGruther’s recommendation to organize secretaries into a “production line” instead of assigning one to every three attorneys. She said the office tried that approach and found it less efficient, in part because no one knew the location and status of files.

Modern computer systems should alleviate that problem, McGruther said. Still greater efficiency would be possible if information from police and other agencies were fed directly into the prosecutor’s case-management software, he said.

Getting the county clerk to let some prosecutor’s employees “seal” cases into Superior Court also could save time, McGruther suggested.

Some of his other ideas included consolidating six office locations or at least getting a common telephone switchboard, standardizing filing systems and using more volunteers.

Commissioners plan to continue their review of McGruther’s report, but have only budgetary control over the prosecutor’s office.

Commissioners Mark Richard and Todd Mielke warmed to the idea of “one-time” expenditures to improve telephone and computer systems.

One comment on this story so far. Add yours!

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  D Statler on August 03 at 11:05 p.m.

  These overworked Prosecutors had plenty of time to show up THIRTEEN strong in Judge Eitzens courtroom and coerce her into a favorable decision.I forgot to mention the THREE secretaries that set accross from me too. I have a real problem with these Prosecutors letting a lying snitch they knew pulled FIVE violent armed robberies off with 16 months in a juvenille facility after the age of 18.Who gives them the authority to make these deals? Even more rediculus was Steve Tucker admitting that he knew nothing about this particular case! Cry me a river! The seeds you have sewn are starting to come back ten fold. I suggest you start doing buisness down there like you owned the place. Obviously running it at status quo is never going to work.We need new leadership in the Prosecutors and Sheriffs office.Not throwing another consultant thousands to tell us we are mismanaged.