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 It's business as usual for judges By Jon Schmitz President Judge Robert E. Dauer pulled into a parking lot shortly before 9 a.m. yesterday and quickly made it clear he didn't care when the 40 other judges of Common Pleas Court arrived. Dauer said he did not plan to admonish his colleagues about their work habits in the wake of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series that described a culture of delay, inconvenience and absent judges in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. ''I have no control over the judges,'' Dauer said when asked if he intended to follow up on the reports. ''It wouldn't have any effect. ''That's up to the voters of Allegheny County. If they want to get rid of the judges, they have that chance every 10 years (when judges face retention elections),'' Dauer said before heading to his office. It was mostly business as usual at the judges' reserved-parking lot on Third Avenue yesterday morning. In some cases, it was business earlier than usual. Some judges arrived earlier than on previous days when a Post-Gazette reporter monitored the lot. Some did not. Some later-arriving judges who knew that photographers and KDKA-TV reporter Paul Martino were waiting for them decided it would be a good day for a brisk walk in the opposite direction. Arriving after 9 were six judges who stopped in the opposite end of the lot from where they usually park and took a one-block detour to avoid the media. They were Donna Jo McDaniel, Patrick McFalls, Eugene B. Strassburger III, John A. Zottola, Joseph M. James and Alan S. Penkower. One of the earliest arriving judges, Lawrence J. O'Toole, told Martino he thought the newspaper series had scant information and that its reporters should be returned ''to Journalism 101.'' A team of Post-Gazette reporters monitored the court system for five months and found a pattern of late-arriving or early-departing judges, long breaks and lunch recesses and scores of people left waiting for cases to be heard. Among those left waiting were jurors, victims, litigants, attorneys and witnesses, including police officers who were pulled away from their duties or being paid overtime. Several judges interviewed by the Post-Gazette for the three-part series that concluded yesterday said it was pointless for them to arrive earlier. They said participants in cases were never ready to begin on time. They also defended their work ethic, saying they efficiently disposed of thousands of cases per year. The Post-Gazette reported that the average length of time needed to complete civil and criminal cases in Allegheny County was well outside the guidelines adopted by the American Bar Association -- guidelines that few urban court systems meet. Civil cases in Allegheny County take an average of two years to complete (three years if they go all the way to trial) and criminal cases take nearly 250 days. The ABA recommended that 90 percent of civil cases be resolved in one year and all cases, barring exceptional circumstances, be cleared within two years. The association's standards called for 90 percent of felony cases to be adjudicated within 120 days of arrest and 90 percent of misdemeanors to be handled within 30 days.
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