The Court's Mistakes

Imagine a case where the prosecution and defense reach an agreement by the first pretrial conference. At that pretrial, the defendant enters a change of plea in front of a judge who sets the matter for sentencing. The defendant, who is in custody, will be released at sentencing if things go according to plan, and all of the parties involved are extremely satisfied with the result.

At sentencing, the judge can’t find the plea in the file. The court, on its own, continues the matter for a brief period of time. However, at the next sentencing, the court still has not found the plea. Another brief continuance. At the next sentencing, when the defense attorney tries to take issue with parts of the probation officer’s sentencing report, the judge notices the report isn’t in the court’s file. Continued again. Finally, the court gets the whole file, but the judge decides to reject the sentencing provisions in the plea despite the fact the defendant, the state, and the probation department all recommend acceptance.

The defendant absolutely refuses to go to trial, and the judge was inclined to give a far harsher sentence than the one in the plea, so the defendant withdraws and requests a change of judge. Unfortunately, the court loses the file for a short time and reassignment takes much longer than normal. After tweaking the agreement to satisfy the new judge, everything finally goes through as planned.

Court errors, like the ones in the scenario above, are fairly common. Because a change of release conditions was not possible, the defendant, through no fault of his own, was forced to wait in custody far longer than he should have. Luckily, it’s rare that everything goes wrong in one case, but it can and does happen. Clients get upset and ask me what I can do. They wonder whether I can file a motion to dismiss, and it’s hard to explain to them that there are relatively few options when the court, not the state, causes the problems.

The system does provide some remedies when the state’s errors cause a defendant to be wrongfully incarcerated, though I believe they are inadequate and rarely granted. On the other hand, courts can in many instances cause defendants to lose their liberty with no real recourse at all. I think most judges seriously try to achieve a just result and protect defendants’ rights, but every court seems to have at least one employee who doesn’t care about doing their job right. I wish more court employees would realize that when they make mistakes, it may profoundly affect someone’s life.