WE CAN DO BETTER – Part 11

WE CAN DO BETTER – Part 11

 

By Alan Miller, Candidate for Judge Superior Court II  

All other attorneys 

Attorneys share with defense attorneys the same duty to keep everyone in the system honest. There are steps that can be taken to better the quality of representation in Dearborn County. 

Rules must be followed 

The proposed rules regarding hearing times and continuances previously set forth in this Statement will apply to all attorneys appearing before the Court. Attorneys must also come to court prepared. If it is clear an attorney has not prepared or is not ready to proceed with a particular matter, court will be stopped while that attorney brings himself up to speed. 

Additionally, if a document presented to the court by any party---police officer, prosecutor, or attorney---does not meet basic standards of grammar, punctuation or accuracy, it will be returned to the filing party and will not be accepted until the appropriate corrections have been made, and it is acceptable for presentation to the court. Make no mistake: I do not expect every document submitted to the Court to be Moby Dick. However, I do not believe it is too much to ask for a document to include the correct names of the parties involved or the correct court in which the case is being heard. While this will be perceived as being nitpicky, this is incredibly important: if an individual presenting documents to the court does not take the time to make sure they look and sound correct, how do we know anything else they did---the investigation, the research supporting their position---is accurate?  

Regarding the Office of the Dearborn County Prosecuting Attorney - Decisions must be made in a timely manner. Delay is not an acceptable tactic. 

Our elected prosecutor partly blames our county’s growth for the perceived increase in crime over the past several years. Even granting this assumption, our prosecutor demonstrates a failure to grasp a larger point: the prosecutor’s office can no longer be run as it were 30 years ago. Instead, processes and procedures must be updated to reflect the changes in our county.  

For example, one charged with a lower-level offense or first-time minor offenders in a larger, more populated county may see a judge once. Their case is often disposed within a couple of hours after their arrest. This is largely because the prosecuting attorneys in those counties recognize that if they let a large number of these types of cases drag on for months on end, the work of the office will grind to a halt. I do not believe that drive-thru justice is acceptable or is appropriate for our county. However, there are lessons to be learned from this approach that can be applied to better our justice system.

 

Some of our current deputy prosecutors delay any type of decisions, forcing individuals incarcerated on even the most minor of charges to wait in jail for weeks or months until the defendant will agree to any resolution offered, just to get out of jail. 

The vast majority of cases in Dearborn County are settled by plea agreements: agreements between the State and the defendant to set and specific terms. These agreements must be presented to the judge for his or her approval. If the court approves the agreement, its terms are set and cannot be changed. Since this is the case, delaying decisions regarding plea offers or waiting until the last minute to make a reasonable offer slows our justice system substantially. 

If elected, I will do everything in my power to ensure that cases move along as efficiently as possible within the confines set forth by the United States Constitution and the Indiana Constitution.  

This is the eleventh part of my platform statement; a detailed proposal for how to improve our current justice system. It will be released over the next several months through facebook.com/makeitmiller2012 and makeitmiller2012.com. PLEASE feel free to forward this to your friends and family.
Thanks for your continued support!

Alan Miller