To the Editor,

Thank you for your effort to inform our citizens about our current District Court situation with your story “Chief Judge, DA disagree on court backlog.” However, several representations in your story deserve clarification in the interest of accuracy. Most importantly, I do not disagree with the DA. I know of no statement by the DA on the subject made to me personally nor quoted in your story with which I disagree. I agree that a team effort is needed to reduce the number of pending cases. I did not tell the reporter that extending the court day was not viable nor that I had no opinion on whether it would impact cases. I said only that I was unaware of such a proposal and that it could raise issues such as overtime for clerks.

Other clarifications include the following: The unresolved election affected court as of Jan. 1, 2019, rather than in November 2018. Judge Carter was not appointed to fill the vacancy. As I discussed with the reporter, he is subject to being commissioned to preside here on a session by session basis. The six-month “cooling off period” recommended by Judicial Standards would also apply to Jack Moody as a former assistant public defender. As I discussed with the reporter, allowing some passage of time before presiding over cases of former colleagues is part of the rationale.

The reporter’s assertion that I wouldn’t directly comment on the backlog is proven erroneous by the inclusion of comments which I made. I did not say that normally judges’ schedules for the entire year would be known. I did say that, under normal circumstances, we would have known in November who our five judges would be and would have been able to plan accordingly for this year.

Judith Milsap Daniels

Chief District County judge

Judical District 16-B