City Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys:
City prosecutors and defense attorneys:
For the out of custody cases set between April 23 and May 1, 2020, please confer and try to resolve those cases. You need to contact the court clerks to get new dates if you cannot resolve those cases or you require more time to complete and mail in the settlement paperwork. Please email the following email group based on the location of your hearing.
Suburban cases: 4thBrookdaleUpdate@courts.state.mn.us; 4thRidgedaleUpdate@courts.state.mn.us
Downtown cases: 4thCriminalC11Correspondence@courts.state.mn.us; 4thCriminalPSFCorrespondence@courts.state.mn.us
We have heard from many of you and you are universally clear you want fewer people in the courtrooms when we come back (presumably May 4, 2020). The judges have conferred and our solution is this:
We will hold hearings only on the scheduled domestic, DWI, and assault cases (and those defendants’ other open cases) until mid-June. The remaining cases will be continued. The prosecutor can have up to five additional slots per calendar to schedule cases they believe have high priority. (Minneapolis case types may be slightly different because they have separate domestic calendars.)
In order to get the new dates for the other cases, you will need to contact the clerks’ office (like you are doing from April 23 – May 1). Settle everything you can without hearings.
Afternoons: We need more space for hearings in order to make physical space. For the time being there will not be court trials at Brookdale or Ridgedale. The cases you cannot resolve will be continued into July for court trials (possibly with a referee presiding like we have downtown).
Evidentiary hearings you have scheduled should be examined to determine if the parties can stipulate to the evidence and submit them on that evidence and written argument to the judge assigned to the calendar the day the hearing is set. You do not need to wait until the date of the hearing to make the submissions.
Payables tend to be large calendars. Fred Hendrickson wrote to you asking you to consider giving the Hearing Officers more authority for the time being. That could help reduce the calendar sizes. Also, keep reaching out to the defendants in those cases to try to get them resolved. You can eFile the agreements and mail the checks for example. We will likely have to cancel the payable calendars for a while in order to free up the prosecutor and judge to do more calendar work.
While we are sending out more jury summonses than normal, you can imagine many people will seek to defer their service. We simply do not know whether we will have jurors for out of custody trials. At your request, your trials will be assigned to a judge the day before your trial date and the boards downtown will tell you where the case is set. You will not all go to 1159. That will reduce the number of trials per courtroom.
All courtrooms have been marked for social distancing and Andrew Pieper will continue to work on the physical issues you have raised. At Brookdale and Ridgedale, if you send a second prosecutor, we will open the second courtroom and the judge will travel as cases are ready unless you want to use one for negotiation and one for pleas. The deputy will be with the judge, however. So many details—they will be worked out.
We are strongly encouraging you to continue to exchange discovery and engage in settlement discussions. Plea by mail avoids a court appearance!
Thank you and take care.
