Justice Delayed or Justice Denied?
An interesting thing popped up while researching the PTR programs. Massive numbers of “no file” cases on the arraignment dockets. An arraignment is where after a criminal is arrested he goes before a judge who decides if probable cause is present to bring the criminal to trial. It is a rubber stamp thing, yeah you get a chance to provide testimony but the judge is a low level special judge that answers to the district judges and knows to keep the pipeline full of cases to support the system. Generally the arraignment is a month after the arrest.
So the bondsmen watch the daily arraignment court down at the courthouse so they know if one of their clients doesn't show up at court. One bondsman goes down and gets the list of cases and dispositions and the bondsmen's association posts it online. What a shock to see that the vast majority of arraignments are continued because no charges are filed. After two months or so the bond is exonerated as no charges were filed but the prosecutor can still file charges up until the statute of limitations has passed.
On one day there were 42 arraignments scheduled, 6 cases had charges filed by the D.A, 36 cases were continued because the D.A. had not filed charges yet. That was November 20th of this year and the other days are pretty much represented by the ratios on November 20th.
And why did we pick November 20th to document these no file cases? Because Tuesday is the no file docket, cases that have been open for three months, meaning that the D.A. Has had three months to file charges but has refused to file the charges.
Meaning that only 14% of the arrests had charges filed.
We are going to look up some of the names on the no file docket list for November 20th and see if they are repeat offenders, what their crimes are that are not being charged, and track if any charges do get filed.
