By Ray King
After being barred from conducting jury trials for several months because of the pandemic, Judges in the 11-West Judicial District, which includes Jefferson and Lincoln Counties finally got the go-ahead to resume jury trials. There was just one problem, the existing courtrooms are not big enough to allow for social distancing.
On Thursday, Circuit Judge Rob Wyatt, who is the Administrative Judge for the district, said judges have inquired about a number of different locations, and received responses from two of them.
The second location is the Pine Bluff Convention Center and after a meeting with Convention Center Director Joseph McCorvy, Wyatt said “he basically rolled out the red carpet for us. They’re going to have it set up just like a courtroom and you wouldn’t know any different other than the fact we’re going to be meeting at the convention center.” The space to be used in the convention center is the same as the space the City of Pine Bluff uses for council meetings.
Wyatt said that just because there have been no jury trials doesn’t mean new cases are not coming in everyday, and they’re starting to stack up which is why the courts are looking at alternate sites to get some cases moving. He also discussed how cases will be prioritized and which cases will be tried first.
He said he expected to get a lot of cases moved by the end of the year because, in many instances, defendants don’t decide to take pleas until the day the trial is scheduled “because they don’t have that hammer (trial) hanging over their head.”
Wyatt said statistics are kept on each judicial district in the state and the numbers for this district for the past few months have not been good.
Finally, Wyatt praised the work of the case coordinators in each of the three divisions that handle criminal cases for their work, even though trials were halted for months.
