The mass dismissal of pending criminal cases in Riverside County — roughly 1,700 since fall — has “completely stopped,” District attorney Mike Hestrin said.
While the number of Superior Court case dismissals numbered in the hundreds in November and December, dismissals started tapering off in February and fell to the single digits in April, according to data provided by the Riverside County District attorney’s office.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that the worst is behind us,” Hestrin said Thursday, June 29.
“We’ve had now many weeks of no dismissals,” he said. “So I think it’s past us and I think the system is beginning to stabilize and get back to its kind of normal functioning.”
Hestrin sounded the alarm in October when judges — citing a logjam of cases — started dismissing cases in bulk, including felonies.
While felony charges can be re-filed — and they were — misdemeanors cannot. Most of the misdemeanor dismissals involved accusations of driving while intoxicated, but cases that were dismissed and couldn’t be re-filed included charges against a Jurupa Valley pastor accused of sexual battery against a 17-year-old congregant.
The dismissals also meant that defendants and crime victims didn’t get their day in court, often after waiting months for justice.
The dismissals came after the expiration of a California Supreme Court order, imposed as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, that allowed courts to bypass speedy trial rules and delay criminal cases.
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Hestrin criticized judges for dismissing cases, saying they should have granted postponements until a courtroom opened. The judicial system contended that more plea bargains should have been reached to reduce the backlog, while some defense attorneys blamed Hestrin for, in their view, being unwilling to plea bargain and seeking unreasonable sentences.
Hestrin, who said more than 90% of his cases have been plea bargained out, said the dismissals started dropping when Judge Judith Clark took over as presiding judge of the county’s Superior Court system at the start of 2023.
With about 1,300 of the 1,700 or so dismissed cases being misdemeanors out of the Indio court, Clark dedicated a courtroom solely to hear misdemeanor cases coming out of Indio, Hestrin said, adding that move “had a major impact” on the number of dismissals.
“It wasn’t just simply that we don’t have enough judges. That’s true,” Hestrin said. “But the defense and defendants were gaming the system … they were angling for dismissals.”
“ … Now all of a sudden you were gonna have a designated courtroom to take misdemeanors from Indio and guess what? They started pleading their cases out.”
Dedicating a courtroom to hearing Indio misdemeanors “was something really simple but brilliant and I think the presiding judge deserves great credit for being innovative,” Hestrin added.
The county’s elected leaders continue to lament what they describe as the state’s failure to allocate enough judges to keep up with the county’s growing population.
“Our local courts still remain short handed for the population and number of cases heard, resulting in lengthy delays, particularly for civil and family court issues,” Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said in his July email newsletter to constituents.
“But that requires action from the State Legislature and Governor to fix.”
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