Leon County chairman pushes prosecutors, public defender to address jail population
Leon County’s commission chairman is hoping to bring together prosecutors and the Public Defender’s office to clear cases quicker and reduce the county jail population.
In a letter this week, Commissioner Bill Proctor asked State Attorney Jack Campbell and Public Defender Jessica Yeary to address the “crises of detention overpopulation” by expediting their approaches to disposing of cases.
“Taxpayers, who are our bosses, expect our mutual cooperation in settling justice issues in a timely manner,” Proctor wrote in his letter.
He asked Yeary and Campbell to schedule a meeting for the last week of February. The Leon County Commission has a series of criminal justice workshops, including one related to jail population, scheduled for March 22.
“I am asking you to please meet with me and select members of our legal system to review our current approaches to processing persons through the legal system who have been arrested for alleged crimes.”
The Tallahassee Democrat has reported on the Leon County Detention Facility population and backlog of court cases across the 2nd Judicial Circuit. Court proceedings, not just locally but across the country, stalled during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
► Read the letter from Proctor to Campbell and Yeary
More: Backlog of court cases in 2nd Judicial Circuit exasperating attorneys, defendants
In Leon County, the jail population is somewhere around 1,175. Of those, 89% are awaiting sentencing or trial. The jail is nearing the 1,200 inmate capacity forcing the Leon County Sheriff’s Office to house them in neighboring counties.
Proctor noted the cost to keep inmates in jail, the average stay being 262 days.
It costs taxpayers roughly $100 a day to house an inmate, making the economic impact just as real as the mental toll of awaiting a conclusion to cases.
The County Commission, however, has no sway over how legal proceedings are handled by the elected offices of state attorney and public defender. Not all defendants are represented by a court-appointed lawyer either.
“We find it a jaw dropping reality that it costs taxpayers $26,200 on average for the housing of arrested persons in this community,” he wrote.
“I honor your respective work. However, I believe you can fulfill your work in ways that can significantly drop the stay period from 262 days down to 30-45 days. If the courts will work even more diligent over the next few months, I sense we can lower the population of the detention center considerably by spring.”
Proctor’s letter has a softer tone than his comments during last week’s County Commission meeting in which he admonished the work of the Public Defender’s Office, likening the pace of case closures to “foot dragging.”
“Our public defender ain’t executing and getting the offers to the detainee,” he said during discussion about a proposed ordinance addressing homelessness-related issues. “It ain’t going fast enough because of foot dragging there.”
Both Campbell and Yeary said they are open to having the discussion and appreciate Proctor’s attention to the issue. But Yeary said the role of the Public Defender’s Office is to fight for their client’s rights, not shuffle them through the system in order to keep jail numbers low.
“Our role is not to be a plea mill,” she said in a statement to the Tallahassee Democrat. “Our role is to defend the rights of our clients in court. We are by no means dragging our feet. Courts were closed for over a year and what we will not do is rush our representation.”
It's also not up to her office to decide which plea offers have agreeable terms.
“The fact of the matter is, we present to our clients each and every plea offer that we receive from the State Attorney,” she said. “It is ultimately our clients’ decision, with our guidance, whether or not to accept.”
Yeary has focused on reducing the jail population by urging prosecutors to focus on alternatives to incarceration and preventing low-level offenders from being caught in the already mountainous backlog of cases.
She said the way to limit overcrowding in the jail is to “stop over-prosecuting our neighbors only to have them released by jury verdict,” and focus on criminal justice reform efforts.
Campbell said the current jail population isn’t much different than the historic population which has remained above 1,000 inmates for years. “I don’t think it's that much of an anomaly,” he said in an interview.
He said he responded to Proctor’s letter that such a meeting would have to be publicly noticed and conducted in accordance with Florida’s Sunshine Laws because the request attempts to convene elected officials who are members of the Public Safety Coordinating Council.
Campbell said the backlog in court cases is real, “but it’s improving significantly."
“We’re doing a lot of trials,” he said. “As the community grows, our criminal justice system is going to proportionally grow and we have some decisions to make about that. The backlog is real, but I don’t see it as debilitating as I did a year ago.”
According to a monthly report by the Sheriff's Office obtained by the Democrat, 86 of the 1,173 people being held in the LCDF are being charged for misdemeanors as of mid-January. Most of those people, Campbell said, were released and then re-offended.
Roughly one in three cases are going into diversion in Leon County, Campbell said. There are 6,878 pending cases against 5,471 defendants. This year, 17 cases have been resolved by trial verdict, 398 plea agreements have been completed and more than 82% of cases have plea offers associated with them.
“For every case resolved by trial, you have five that are resolved through some other, no trial resolution,” Campbell said. “In a community of our size, a 1,100 person jail is where we may be after the backlog is cleared.
Of the 1,084 people in-custody on felony charges in mid-January, according to the Leon County Sheriff's Office, 135 were detained in murder cases, 50 were sex offenses, 77 were robbery, 157 were drug-related, 224 were other violent offences, 84 were burglary, 101 were felony-theft and fraud, 11 were other property crimes and 245 were other felony offenders.
Additionally, 482 people have been in jail for over six months; 272, over a year; 117, over two years; 42, over three years and 14 people have been in the Leon County jail for over four years.
Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Leon County chairman pushes prosecutors, public defender to address jail population
