Little Rock’s rising crime rate coupled with covid-related court delays has about tripled the caseload in Pulaski County Circuit Court over the past two years, forcing prosecutors and public defenders to struggle to keep up.
The recent infection spike driven by the rise of the omicron variant has forced the courts to delay jury trials scheduled for this month. That’s more than 100 trials in January pushed back in only one courtroom alone.
A court system equipped to take on about 5,000 criminal cases per year, mostly divided between three full-time criminal courts, is now dealing with almost three times that many because so few cases have been cleared since the pandemic began. Circuit Judge Leon Johnson, the circuit’s administrative judge who operates a 100 percent criminal court, said more delays are assured if the infection rate can’t be curtailed.
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