Short on masks, sanitizer and staff, courts in Charlotte may open for thousands in 2 weeks
The race to safely reopen the Mecklenburg County Courthouse by June 1 is running out of time as it runs into COVID-19 related obstacles of staffing and supplies.
Almost a third of the employees in the clerk’s office, an essential part of most courthouse proceedings, either have quit, retired, taken medical leave or are working at home. Some of the employees are considered high risk for severe health complications if they contract the coronavirus, Clerk of Court Elisa Chinn Gary told the Observer this week.
That shortage, which has been increasing throughout the month, severely hamstrings plans in two weeks to add more courtroom activity to the state’s largest local justice system.
Backlogs in criminal cases, including homicides and other violent offenses, will grow as required preliminary hearings are limited to mornings only due to the insufficient numbers of available courtroom clerks. Jury trials in Superior Court will remain on indefinite hold due to lingering health and safety concerns, officials said this week.
District Attorney Spencer Merriweather says related delays in District Court criminal trials — most notably domestic violence cases — will continue indefinitely due to the personnel shortages. The trials have been on hold since March under a statewide shutdown of most courthouse activity designed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
While acknowledging the importance of clerks throughout the criminal-justice process, Merriweather told the Observer on Monday that further delays of domestic-violence trials puts lives at risk.
“Domestic violence cases can graduate from a push or a shove or an open-handed slap. Those things can become a homicide very quickly,” Merriweather said. “Criminal trials are a primary instrument of intervention to save lives. Their absence makes us all feel we’re on borrowed time.”
Because of the pandemic, courthouses around North Carolina have been operating on skeleton schedules that began in March. The restrictions will begin to be phased out starting in two weeks.
Locally, the Mecklenburg courthouse’s goal of unveiling a new version of itself to combat the coronavirus has been sidetracked by the shortage of workers along with a chronic lack of supplies.
Chief District Court Judge Elizabeth Trosch told the Observer that courthouse officials have been trying — and failing — for weeks to acquire the masks, hand sanitizer and cleaning substances they need to disinfect the building and keep lawyers, witnesses, defendants and the thousands of additional visitors safe.
Some of the shortages have been so acute that Trosch said she used a recipe she found online to make gallons of hand sanitizer herself, which she donated for general courthouse use. Meanwhile, the grandmother of a judicial assistant sewed two protective cloth masks for each judge, Trosch said.
The state court system has since promised to supply masks to all courthouse employees. Still to be decided, however, is whether the courthouse will require all persons entering courtrooms to wear some kind of face covering and whether they will have enough masks on hand for those who show up without one.
The courthouse is still waiting to see whether it will receive adequate amounts of cleaning supplies to disinfect courtrooms after individual hearings throughout the day.
As it is, social distancing requirements will dramatically cut attendance in courtrooms and adjoining lobbies, Trosch said. Administrative hearings such as “homicide day,” which could draw close to 100 visitors to a single courtroom, will now have gallery attendance capped at 20 to better maintain safe distances between seats.
On a broader scale, Trosch said the courthouse has expanding its technology to do more remote court hearings. She said the courts are also exploring holding evictions and other proceedings in other sites to lower courthouse traffic.
“We sure as heck can’t have 70,000 in there in June,” Trosch said. “It’s just not safe.”
Trosch said discussions in the last week with the county over cleaning and personal hygiene supplies have left her more optimistic that the courthouse can safely add to its schedule in two weeks. But for now, she said, “We are working without the resources to keep everybody safe.”
“That’s part of getting people back to work,” Trosch said. “There are lawyers and court staff who are reluctant to be in that building, who say, ‘I don’t feel safe until you get the necessary supplies.’”
‘First Responders’
Plans to reopen the Mecklenburg Courthouse to the public have been ongoing for weeks between Trosch, Chinn Gary, Merriweather as well as Public Defender Kevin Tully and Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Bob Bell.
In the month before the ordered shutdown of legal proceedings by N.C. Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, the Mecklenburg courthouse drew 70,000 visitors. In April, the number was 13,000. Trosch says officials hope to be able to safely handle a number somewhere in between.
In Chinn Gary’s office, 65 of the 218 employees were missing May 11, a 30% drop.
Some of the loss of personnel resulted from pre-pandemic vacancies, she said. The rest have been due to “recent resignations and retirements” that have increased as the start of the courthouse’s expanded schedule get closer. Other absences involved employees considered high-risk by the Centers for Disease Control. Staff who show symptoms of illness are “actively encouraged” to stay at home, Chinn Gary said.
To compensate for the fall-off, Chinn Gary said her clerks, whom she described as the “First responders of our court system,” have been cross-training to take on other responsibilities. They also have begun staggering work schedules to better cover shifts, she said in an email to the Observer.
“We stand willing to change, pivot and adjust ... to meet the demands of the evolving court environment. One day at a time. One week at a time. One court docket at a time.”
COVID-19 has personally affected the District Attorney’s Office. Merriweather said one of his prosecutors who lives in a another county tested positive for the disease but is recovering.
Last week, Merriweather presented a 25-page, detailed plan to resume some administrative, criminal proceedings in District and Superior courts. It proposed opening a limited number of courtrooms that would operate throughout the day in 90-minute “quads” with five cases scheduled per session. Social distancing recommendations would be followed throughout.
Now, given the numbers of available clerks, the quads will be reduced to two morning sessions.
“It certainly restricts us. A nine- or 10-week halt has set everything back,” the prosecutor said. “This takes an almost voluminous backlog and compounds it across the board.
“But the good news is we’re starting somewhere, and that is good news. We’re starting slow. We’re going to have to try all of this out first.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 6:45 AM with the headline "Short on masks, sanitizer and staff, courts in Charlotte may open for thousands in 2 weeks."
