program in place
of the present (admittedly hands-on) time-consuming process. 12 That computer program can then be made available to all
those courts doing or thinking about doing
settlement conferences, whether or not on
a demand basis.
When the prior article was published in
2007, we had no reliable statistics by which
to judge the success and efficiency of the
criminal settlement conference program.
Based solely on the experience of those
conducting them, it was surmised that 60
percent or so of the cases having settlement
conferences resulted in a plea. 13 As will be
seen using the new methodology, this was
not far off the mark (actually, it was a 56
percent settlement rate). It was also
hypothesized with no real hard figures that
approximately 65 percent of criminal cases
go to such conferences, which as it turns
out was wide of the mark; it is estimated
that 30 percent of the remaining 50 per-
cent of cases (a figure hereafter explained)
not disposed of early in the process go to a
settlement conference. What was correct,
however, and is still true, are the reasons
why the majority of criminal cases do not
have settlement conferences in our court:
(a) the case is disposed of by plea, diversion
or dismissed very early in the process
before the case is officially assigned to
a criminal trial division;
(b)the defendant has been advised of a
plea offer very early in the process at a
Regional Court Center (RCC, hereafter discussed) and is not interested in
exploring the plea further in a settlement conference;
(c) both sides agree a settlement conference
would be unproductive; or
(d)no plea offer will be made (not com-
mon but most often in violent offense
cases). 14
With respect to (a) above, this remains a
goal of the criminal division to have criminal cases disposed of as early in the process
as possible, which is crucial to a successful
processing of the
enormous number
of criminal case filings in the court.
Current accurate
figures show that 50
percent of filed
criminal cases end
within three months
of filing and never
reach a criminal trial
division, so that only
50 percent of the
remaining criminal
cases would be eligible for a criminal settlement conference
in any event. This
means (to explain
the earlier statement
that 30 percent of
the remaining 50
percent of cases go
to a settlement conference) that only
50 percent of the
entire criminal caseload would even be
eligible for such a
conference.
It also remains clear that judicial officers
who are able to clear their courtrooms of
other defendants so that the settlement
conference is private have a higher rate of
successful settlement conferences ending in
a plea. For busy criminal judges who usually only conduct settlement conferences on
Monday through Thursday, between 8 or
8:30 to 10 a.m. (along with motions, pleas
and other hearings) and then begin trials, it
is difficult to remove other inmates in and
out of the courtroom to do a settlement
conference with one inmate. However, it is
easier to do so on Fridays, when there are
no trials and settlement conferences are
conducted all day, by many criminal judges,
along with longer motions and evidentiary
hearings.
When: The RCC/EDC Process
To reduce the number of pretrial jail days
and reduce delay, there are two Regional
Court Centers (RCC) and two Early
Disposition Courts (EDC) in Maricopa
County. The centers process felony matters
(usually less serious and less complex) and
hold initial appearances and preliminary
hearings. The EDC calendars handle a
subset of cases, such as those subject to
Proposition 200, an initiative passed in the
late 1990s that prohibits prison sentencing
for certain low-level drug offenses. The
consolidation of these processes within the
trial court as opposed to being bifurcated
between the trial court and limited jurisdiction courts takes 10 to 14 days off case
processing and reduces jail time.
Each RCC/EDC houses a contingent
of public defenders, deputy county attorneys, criminal administrators, interpreters,
adult probation officers, deputy sheriffs
and courtroom clerks. Though in many
cases defendants are in custody and have
initial appearances at the jail where preliminary hearings are also set, the initial
appearance process is available for those
coming to RCC to resolve an outstanding
warrant.
For our purposes, the RCC/EDC
process is crucial to our system of conducting criminal settlement conferences. The
overwhelming majority of defendants are
offered what is the state’s best plea
agreement (“the RCC plea”), which if not
Criminal Settlement Conferences on Demand
IT REMAINS A GOAL OF THE CRIMINAL
DIVISION TO HAVE CRIMINAL CASES
DISPOSED OF AS EARLY IN THE
PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, WHICH IS
CRUCIAL TO A SUCCESSFUL
PROCESSING OF THE ENORMOUS
NUMBER OF CRIMINAL CASE FILINGS.
