Odd that they got a government teacher to comment on a legal issue? I think some in Durham and NC may be surprised how the courts deal with the speedy trial issue in this case.
One way to get the courts to slap you down is to abuse defendants like Nifong is doing. NC may find they have the strictest speedy trial rules in the nation forced upon them by the federal courts because they could not find a way to reign in Nifong. Many times the courts have pushed the law along because they were offended by the actions of the state. I would guess that Miranda was one such situation.
Warrant backlog drops by nearly 26,000
BY BRIANNE DOPART, The Herald-Sun
September 9, 2006 8:32 pm
DURHAM -- A Durham Police Department backlog of unserved warrants has dropped from an estimated 35,000 to 9,300 in a less than four months.
But officials acknowledge it's not because the paperwork has been dealt with.
City Manager Patrick Baker says the numbers differ because the city never had 35,000 unserved warrants to begin with -- he thinks.
"I've never understood the numbers [of warrants] and how they're calculated. I think some of those warrant [counts] have been a little bit of hyperbole," Baker said.
The 35,000 figure, mentioned at a City Council meeting in late May, must have been an exaggeration, he said. The council also was told that the Police Department didn't have enough people to handle the warrant backlog.
If officials did exaggerate, Baker said, it was only to communicate that there were "several thousand" warrants that had gone unserved.
At the May meeting, Police Chief Steve Chalmers told the council that the warrant-serving system is "certainly not working."
At the same meeting, Chalmers briefly entertained the notion of handing the city's unserved warrants over to the Sheriff's Office, which was easing its own, smaller backlog at a rate of 450 warrants a month, sheriff's Lt. Adam Clayton said.
When questioned in mid-July about the city's backlog, police spokeswoman Kammie Michael told the Herald-Sun the city had counted its warrants and found 10,200 unserved ones.
Michael did not offer an explanation for the difference between 35,000 in late May and 10,200 in mid-July. She also did not respond to questions about how the Police Department's records division tallies such numbers.
Chalmers, meanwhile, said he had never seen a number "in print" about the unserved warrant total.
"If someone had seen it and told me, I would've taken issue with it," he said.
The chief said he delivered a report about unserved warrants to the city's Crime Cabinet years ago and recalled a backlog then of about 7,000. A number as high as 35,000 would have sent up red flags for him because it would have been implausible, he said.
Baker said he didn't know "the methodology" behind the 35,000 figure.
"I would expect that we've taken hundreds if not thousands of warrants off that number by now, though," he added.
The newly served warrants he referred to were handled by the Police Department's Gang Unit, whose members were pulled off their regular duties July 24 to deal with the warrant problem.
Michael said that, in a period of 24 days, the 30-officer unit served 203 warrants in 533 attempts.
Final numbers have not been released. But Chalmers said he hoped to receive a full report by early October.
Baker said he was pleased with the unit's work. But he said he didn't want his "Gang Unit serving warrants all day" when other work needed to be done.
Eventually, the Police Department will have to form a squad dedicated to serving warrants, possibly modeled after the sheriff's squad, Chalmers said.
He emphasized that the city's backlog did not include warrants for serious crimes. Most unserved warrants are for failure to appear in court and summonses for worthless checks.
Baker agreed.
"We're not sitting on murder warrants," he said. "But there is a type of people that build up on their criminal activity. ... They move on to something bigger and bigger."
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