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 A child waits A year ago, a candidate-screening committee asked Judge Joan Orie Melvin whether she would have enough time to devote to her judicial duties while she raised six small children. That question led to another: How much time does a judge spend at work? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters monitored Allegheny County Common Pleas Court judges for five months to answer that question. This is the second of a three-part series on their observations.
The victim was only 4, a tiny girl who arrived at juvenile court with her parents and baby brother promptly at 8:30 a.m. She was there to testify against a teen-ager charged with burning her with a cigarette and cutting her with a knife. Her hearing was scheduled for 9 a.m., as were 26 others. The judge didn't arrive until 9:50, though, and didn't take the first case until after 10. It wasn't the 4-year-old's. The scarred little girl and her family would wait. The place where they waited is nothing like the marble-floored hallways and wood-paneled courtrooms of Common Pleas Court's criminal and civil divisions, Downtown. Juvenile court occupies the basement and first floor of a dingy brick building on Forbes Avenue in Oakland. Ceilings leak from time to time. Public restrooms reek. This was the second time the little girl would wait. The first was Sept. 18, when the trial was originally scheduled. After hours of delay that day, the case was postponed to Oct. 9. Finally, at 4:15 p.m., nearly eight hours after they had arrived, the little girl and her family were called into Common Pleas Judge Patrick McFalls' courtroom. They were told the case would be postponed again; police officers hadn't shown up to testify. All juvenile courts deal in misery, but conditions in Allegheny County's compound the suffering. Juvenile court is the place where three full-time judges order children to be taken from abusive and neglectful parents. It's where judges permanently sever parents' legal rights to their children. It's the court that sends delinquents, some as young as 10, away to reform school. In this place, families are ripped apart. Parents cry. Children cry. Judges cry. But to call Allegheny County's juvenile court a river of tears would be a compliment. Juvenile court is a swamp where judges are bogged down with cases and children are caught in the mire. Judges who arrive at court an hour after they're scheduled to start hearing cases contribute to that. Judges who refuse to help each other with their caseloads make it worse. But in reality, even if three of the most prompt, hard-working, considerate jurists in the universe were assigned to Allegheny County's juvenile court, they would still be swamped. Children are forced to wait hours in the cramped halls of the court not so much because of the judges who are there but because of the judges who are not. There simply are too many cases for three judges to handle. Hurry up and wait On another day in October, Mary Saxon's two daughters missed an entire day of school while waiting for a hearing before McFalls. Allegheny County Children and Youth Services wanted to put the girls in foster care because the older one had accused her stepfather of assaulting her Ñ an accusation she would later recant. Saxon lost a day's pay and got a $42 parking ticket. ''I am on a strict budget. I am trying to support four kids. I can't afford this,'' Saxon said in frustration at 4 p.m. while she waited in the hallway. Had she let her 12- and 15-year-old daughters play hooky from school, her caseworker would have lectured her, she said. But somehow it was fine for the court to order her to arrive at 9 a.m. and then make her and the children wait all day for a hearing. On this day, McFalls' court schedule listed 38 cases involving 73 children. Half were paperwork matters, involving no more than a signature on a caseworker's report. That left 19 cases to hear. But then three shelter hearings and two adoptions were added. A shelter hearing is required after CYS removes a child from a parent. The caseworker must get a judge's permission for this within 72 hours of placing a child with foster parents. McFalls arrived at 10 that morning, an hour after he was scheduled to hear the first case. All of his cases except three were set for 9 a.m. One was set for 10 and two for 11. All three would wait until the afternoon, however, because adoption and shelter hearings are always done first. McFalls finished those by noon, then started on the cases scheduled for 9 a.m. He broke for lunch for 45 minutes at 2 p.m. All the while, the Saxons waited in the hallway near McFalls' courtroom. At the other end of the hall, the only waiting room on that floor was full. On any given day, people ordered to arrive at 8:30 and 9 a.m. play a perverse game of musical chairs. Instead of one chair short, juvenile court is dozens short. So people line the hallways, two and three deep, making them auxiliary waiting rooms. They slouch in corners. They slump on the floor. There's a children's waiting room, but people who staff it go home at 1:30 every afternoon but Wednesdays, when it is locked up at 3:30. After that, bored children wallow on the floor. With nothing to do for hours on end, they fidget. They fiddle. They fight. They drive their parents crazy. Every once in a while, a deputy sheriff exits a courtroom and shouts, ''Hold it down. The judge can't hear.'' Saxon watched as McFalls' tipstaff, Jimmy McGuire, called case after case, but never hers. She complained to him. ''Look at the schedule. You have a number,'' McGuire yelled at her. And, he said, her number was near the end of the list of cases because her caseworker hadn't arrived until 11:30 a.m. Cases in which all of the participants had shown up earlier got numbers ahead of hers. ''Tell your caseworker to get in here on time and get a number,'' McGuire snapped. Most cases get numbers, but tipstaves routinely take them out of order. If a caseworker is feeling ill or a probation officer says the hearing will take only five minutes, the tipstaff will jump those cases ahead. And even if every person in every case showed up on time, someone would get the first number and someone, like Saxon, would wait all day. The tardiness of witnesses was the reason McFalls gave for arriving at 10 a.m. After he was temporarily moved from civil to juvenile court a year ago, he said, he arrived on time at first. But McFalls quickly realized that cases would not be ready for him to hear because witnesses would not arrive on time, or they'd not appear at all, like the police in the case of the 4-year-old. So he started showing up later, when he thought all of the people would be ready for some of the cases. Judges Cheryl Allen Craig and Timothy O'Reilly back him up on that. Cases can't start at 9 a.m. because all of the witnesses and lawyers necessary just don't show up by then, they said. But both routinely started court before McFalls, who was transferred back to the Civil Division last month. O'Reilly arrives around 9 a.m. and usually hears his first case at 9:30. Craig usually arrives about 9:30 and takes her first case shortly afterward. The new judge on the bench, Bob Colville, who replaced McFalls, starts court earlier. He arrives at 7:30 a.m. to review cases on his list that day and to be available to anyone who needs to speak with him. He tries to start court at 8:30 and is scheduling cases so that half begin then and the other half after lunch. ''I thought if I am here and ready to go, then I won't be one of the hangups,'' said Colville. The former district attorney said that when he ran for judge, people complained to him about the torture of waiting at juvenile court, first a half-hour outside to get through the metal detector and then endless hours inside. When he attended the school for new judges, conducted for a week in January by the Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts, Colville said one of the things he was told was to show up. ''When court opens, you be there. You step forward,'' Colville said. ''I agree with that. It is part of my obligation to be there.'' Saxon finally got into McFalls' courtroom at 4:30 p.m. The hearing ended 25 minutes later. The judge left five minutes after that, at 5 p.m., a seven-hour day. Both Craig and O'Reilly had finished their cases earlier and left. They could have helped Saxon by offering to take some of McFalls' cases after they'd finished their own. They do that for each other routinely. And they did it for McFalls for a while, but when he didn't reciprocate after his first few weeks, they stopped offering. On Oct. 2, for example, McFalls finished his list at 1 p.m. and left at 1:15, after three-and-a-half hours of work. Craig and O'Reilly still had long lists, and McFalls didn't ask whether they needed him to hear any of their cases. McFalls said he didn't make the offer because by October, the judges had apportioned cases so that each was supposed to have a fairly equal load. And they weren't taking each other's cases, he said, because they felt families should go to the judge who knew their history. But by 4:30 p.m., Saxon didn't care who took her case. She just wanted to go home. And after Colville replaced McFalls, both O'Reilly and Craig took cases for him on days when they were done and he was not. Keeping composure At 5:30 on another October afternoon, McFalls still had 13 cases to hear. Exhausted children slept on the hallway floor. Others complained of hunger. Parents wouldn't leave the building for food, though, because they feared their cases would be called while they were out. Adults, beat by the hours of waiting, were exasperated. McFalls had worked nearly 10 hours the day before Ñ from 10 a.m. until 7:40 p.m., when he finished the last case on the list. The following morning, Oct. 17, he arrived at 9:45 a.m. and took the first case five minutes later. Except for 45 minutes for lunch in his office, he worked continuously, hearing case after case, deciding one after another. By 5:30, he was as exhausted as the people waiting in the hall. He told his tipstaff he would take three more cases, but the rest were to be postponed. After waiting eight hours, 10 families would be sent home and told to return another day and wait again. In postponing cases still pending at 5:30 p.m., McFalls was following the lead of O'Reilly. When O'Reilly started in juvenile court in January 1996, he stayed as late as necessary to finish his court list. Some days it was 3 p.m. On others, it was 8 p.m. When he stayed late, the court staff, deputy sheriffs, attorneys and families all were forced to remain, too. Everyone was tired and cranky, including the judge, O'Reilly said. Some court workers needed to pick up children from day care before the facilities closed. Others simply did not want to work 10-hour days. And, O'Reilly said, it was unfair to the people involved in the cases for the judge to be short-tempered and exhausted. He just couldn't do it anymore. So a few months ago, he stopped. His tipstaff now warns those who remain at 3:30 p.m. that no cases will be taken after 5 p.m. Sometimes that prompts plea bargains. Sometimes cases are rescheduled. But for all of O'Reilly's talk of physical strain, what's just as tough is the emotional exhaustion from listening to never-ending, heartbreaking stories. Many days, McFalls said, he found himself on the verge of tears. Craig, who has been there the longest, since January 1992, claimed she didn't cry anymore. ''They break my heart, but I don't cry. I would be crying all the time,'' she said. Then, she conceded, just a few months ago, she and the entire staff were in tears after she convicted a 10-year-old of a sexual assault. The boy screamed and cried and pleaded for his mother as deputy sheriffs dragged him from the courtroom for transport to a treatment program for sexual offenders who have, themselves, been sexually abused. O'Reilly doesn't deny tears. They flooded his eyes as he tried to discuss a case recently. He could not speak. He left the room to compose himself. Desperate for help On Colville's fifth day, juvenile court buried him under 53 cases. He took the first before 9 a.m. and the last at 6 p.m. Craig, who finished her own list earlier, heard several for him. The new judge left at 6:15 p.m. ''I almost fell asleep at dinner,'' he recalled. ''I went upstairs and crashed. I could have slept for two days.'' But he was back in court the next morning at 7:30. The following Monday, he discovered that his list for Tuesday contained 60 cases. He said no way. ''To give these cases the time and concern and attention they deserve, it is impossible to have 60 in one day,'' Colville said. He asked that the list be cut to 35 and the other cases postponed. Postponing is not a solution, however, Craig said. There won't be any fewer cases on that new court date. The problem is that there are just too many cases to be heard by three full-time judges, one part-timer and one master, a lawyer who serves as a judge. That is a point of agreement among them all, including Max Baer, administrative judge for the Family Division of Common Pleas Court, which includes juvenile court. Baer is the part-timer. He hears cases in juvenile court an average of one-and-a-half days a week. He doesn't reduce the caseload much, though, because most of his cases concern permanency planning, a new type of hearing he devised to move adoptions along more quickly. The normal list containing up to 60 cases is just not reasonable, O'Reilly said. ''I try to listen. But these people are not getting adequate consideration of their cases.'' In Philadelphia, juvenile court has about twice the number of cases as Allegheny, but it also has three times as many judges, with 10 and one master. The Philadelphia master conducts pretrial conferences for each delinquency case. He determines whether the case is ready for trial and assists in plea bargains. In Allegheny County, there are no pretrial conferences. No one knows whether a case on a judge's list will be heard that day or be postponed because it is not ready. That, O'Reilly said, makes it impossible to give cases specific starting times. To have pretrial conferences in Allegheny County juvenile court, to lower the caseload and to reduce the waiting, the number of judges or masters would have to be increased. Craig said the money must be spent. ''We do children and families a disservice when we fail to consider the importance of this court and give it the resources, judges and otherwise, that it needs.'' O'Reilly noted that Gov. Ridge recently promised an additional $25 million for a convocation center at the University of Pittsburgh, but no one was pledging that kind of money to juvenile court. For the past four years, Baer has been trying to raise $30 million to convert the old county jail into a home for family and juvenile courts. He has endured one funding setback after another. Now, however, there is some movement. Late last month, Ridge signed legislation allowing the county commissioners to give the old jail to an authority, which could issue bonds to pay for the renovation then lease the new court building back to the county. Baer hopes work will begin next year. He also is seeking $1.9 million from private foundations to pay for three masters, three child advocates, three parent advocates and three more CYS lawyers in a four-year project. The grants would pay 100 percent of the cost the first year and a declining percentage for the next three years. Finally in the fifth year, the county would pick up the entire cost. Because there is no room in juvenile court, the masters would conduct hearings in CYS regional offices around the county. They would hear routine cases, freeing the judges to spend more time on hearings such as termination of parental rights. Baer hopes to begin this project before year's end. O'Reilly, Craig and Colville believe the masters would help them do justice in juvenile court. ''This place should not be an assembly line,'' O'Reilly said. ''Our children deserve more than that.''
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