The dismissal of 1,782 criminal cases in Riverside Superior Court was not improper, the Court of Appeal ruled July 11. The decision strikes a loss to Riverside District Attorney Michael Hestrin, who had argued the dismissals were a miscarriage of justice. In a concurring opinion, Associate Justice Michael Raphael said that the appellate court should have affirmed the court’s decision under a lighter review.
THE BREAKDOWN
- 1,782 criminal cases were dismissed
- 97 were felony cases
- 725 were DUIs
- 409 were domestic violence cases
- 86 were assault cases
- 83 were drug cases
- 68 were abuse cases
- 48 were weapon charges
- 33 were thefts
- and three were arsons.
Riverside Superior Court declined to comment on the ruling. The Riverside District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“One thousand cases dismissed is a thousand too many,” Hestrin said, according to a press release. “These are real cases with real victims. The victims deserve the right to have their case heard in a court of law. Our victims of crime are being deprived of justice because of a case backlog in the courts.”
Under California’s Speedy Trial Law, criminal cases have to be dismissed within 60 days of arraignment unless a judge finds good cause to continue the case. The appellate courts have ruled that a backlog caused by the pandemic is good cause, but that a delay due to Riverside’s shortage of judges and courtrooms is not good cause.
Riverside Presiding Judge John Monterosso directed the court to dismiss thousands of criminal cases that were awaiting trial after the pandemic. In a press release, he said his hands were tied due to the Speedy Trial Law. Since the backlog was due to a lack of judicial resources, he said, the court had to dismiss the cases.
According to the District Attorney’s online tracker, 1,782 criminal cases were dismissed, including 97 felony cases. The dismissals included 725 DUIs, 409 domestic violence cases, 86 assault cases, 83 drug cases, 68 abuse cases, 48 weapon charges, 33 thefts, three arsons and 257 miscellaneous cases.
Hestrin appealed the dismissals, arguing that the backlog was due to the pandemic. The first appeal was in the case People v. Tapia. Jose Luis Tapia was facing a felony charge for assault with a machete with an allegation of great bodily injury. Tapia was arraigned March 25, 2021.
The trial was delayed by the pandemic, and was further postponed after the pandemic because the courtrooms were clogged up handling other cases. The case was dismissed Oct. 27, 2022, 579 days after arraignment.
The Court of Appeal said that Monterosso did not have to prove that the cases were backlogged solely due to the pandemic to win. Instead, he just had to prove that the shortage of judges contributed to the backlog. Having proved that, he won the appeal.
“Judge Monterosso reasonably found that, although the COVID-19 pandemic had contributed to the Superior Court’s backlog, the court’s chronic backlog predating the pandemic was the main reason why Tapia’s case (and dozens of other cases) could not be tried by Section 1382’s deadline. As a result, Judge Monterosso’s decision to dismiss Tapia’s case did not ‘exceed the bounds of reason’ and was not an abuse of his broad discretion,” the court ruled.
A history of need
Riverside Superior Court has had a shortage of judicial resources for decades. In 2010, the court began dismissing cases. Those dismissals were appealed by then-Riverside District Attorney Rod Pacheco, who lost the case. The published ruling established that Riverside would have to dismiss cases if delayed by a lack of judges.
“For almost two decades, the Superior Court for the County of Riverside has not
had enough judges to adequately serve the county’s ever-increasing population,” the Court of Appeal wrote.
Concurring opinion
In a concurring opinion, Raphael said that the court should have affirmed the case dismissals simply because Hestrin failed to prove that the court was wrong. The presiding justice’s judgment should be trusted, and the underfunding of Riverside Superior Court alone does not mean that cases should be dismissed, he wrote.
“(The majority ruling) explains that the District Attorney’s numbers are not recent enough to be meaningful. That is enough to reject the argument before us,” Raphael wrote.
Raphael also wrote that the court should continue prioritizing criminal cases.
Inconclusive statistics
Hestrin’s argument was based on statistics that the appellate court found inconclusive. The statistics available at the time he filed his appeal covered July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, and showed a drop in dispositions while the pandemic was ongoing. Cases started getting dismissed, however, in October 2022, over a year after the last available data.
“Showing that productivity dropped during the height of the pandemic does not address (the court’s ability to keep up with trials by October 2022),” the Court of Appeal said.
The most recent statistics actually show that case filings increased after the pandemic, meaning that the backlog was not caused by the pandemic, the ruling said.
“Simply showing in the aggregate that Riverside County is disposing of fewer cases, or holding fewer jury trials, does not fully address Judge Monterosso’s reasoning,” the ruling said.
The Court of Appeal ended their analysis by saying that there was no single cause of the court’s ability to try cases.
Case information
Case No. BLF2100023
Appellate Case No. E080076
Jesse Male argued the case on appeal.
Sloan Simmons of Lozano Smith Attorneys at Law represented Riverside Superior Court.
Laura Arnold, under appointment, represented Tapia on appeal.
Read the ruling here.
Watch oral argument here.
Read our prior coverage here:
