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Gains: Justice system ‘would grind to a halt’ without plea bargains
RELATED: Local authorities make their case for plea bargains
YOUNGSTOWN
The volume of criminal cases that make their way to Mahoning County Common Pleas Court is daunting, according to county Prosecutor Paul J. Gains.
Gains noted that there were 1,415 defendants in criminal cases in common pleas court in 2009.
He said the criminal- justice system “would grind to a halt if every defendant went to trial.”
That is why plea bargaining, though not popular in some cases, must be used.
With the caseload evenly divided, each of the five general division common pleas judges would have been assigned 283 cases that year, he noted.
With 52 weeks in a year, each judge would have had to conduct an impossible 51/2 criminal trials per week, he said, noting that his calculations didn’t include any vacations or other time off.
“The system would get backed up. It would be hard for a court to get anything else done” if it were clogged with criminal trials, said Robert Regula, common pleas court administrator.
From Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 this year, there were 2,418 criminal cases filed. During that same period last year, there were 2,423 criminal cases filed.
Gains’ calculations didn’t even take into account the civil docket, which comprises about three-quarters of the common pleas court case-load. From Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 this year, there were more than 7,400 civil and other cases filed. The figures for the same period in 2009 were more than 7,300.
Historically, Gains said his office has plea bargained in a lower percentage of cases than the state average.
A fair multiyear statewide comparison of Mahoning County’s plea bargaining rates and trends to those of other counties and to state averages in recent years, however, cannot be achieved because of a change in reporting methods the Ohio Supreme Court dictated in November 2008.
Gains said the county accounted for less than 1 percent of Ohio’s total inmate population before he took office in 1997.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections website says Mahoning County generated 1.89 percent of the state’s prison population in 2008 and 1.80 percent in 2009.
“The people being sent to prison diminished very slightly,” Gains observed. There are 88 counties in Ohio.
“We are still sending a large percentage to prison,” Gains said.
Gains told the county commissioners in a recent budget hearing that he wants a 60 percent increase in his budget so he can retain and motivate his assistant prosecutors by paying them competitive salaries.
If the prosecutors aren’t motivated to fully prepare cases for trial, “we’re going to lose trials, or the lawyers, because they’re not as prepared, may give better deals than they should be giving” in plea bargains, Gains said.
Gains’ criminal division budget dropped from $2,291,702 in 2008 to $2,214,512 in 2009. This year, he has only $1.8 million for the criminal division due to a recession-induced drop in county revenues.
Youngstown
Crime statistics
The city courts handle thousands of criminal cases each year. Here is a breakdown of the number of cases handled by the courts and prosecutor’s office annually:
More than 1,000 felony cases.
More than 4,000 misdemeanor cases.
More than 6,000 traffic offenses.
Source: Youngstown prosecutor’s office