Kentucky

Jefferson to end routine subpoenas of police officers

Jefferson seeks faster resolutionof certain district court cases



By Jason Riley and R. G. Dunlop ? The Courier-Journal ? May 3, 2009



In a radical change designed to help resolve district court cases more quickly while reducing the time police officers are off the streets, the Jefferson County attorney's office tomorrow is ending a long-standing practice of routinely subpoenaing police for thousands of pretrial hearings in traffic and misdemeanor cases.



The change also is expected to save metro Louisville government hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual payments to police for off-duty court appearances.



Those expenditures exceeded $100,000 a month -- more than $1.5 million annually -- last year and in 2007.



More than 113,000 misdemeanor and traffic cases passed through Jefferson District Court in 2008, and many were resolved without hearings or any witnesses being subpoenaed to testify. But in "95 percent" of the cases that required at least one court hearing, the subpoenaed officers were not needed, and their presence had no bearing on the outcome, Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert White said in a recent interview.



"They are going there, sitting around," he said. "That should not occur."



For many years, and despite a local court rule adopted by district judges approximately a decade ago discouraging the practice, it has been customary for prosecutors to subpoena officers for pretrial hearings in traffic and misdemeanor cases -- even though court officials agree with White that they generally have had little or no effect on the end result.



"Why in the world is an officer being subpoenaed in a 12-mph-over speeding case?" asked District Judge Anne Haynie. "It's been that way forever."



White and other police officials said they do not know precisely how much money the new policy might save. But they estimated the number of subpoenas to officers is likely to decline by at least 30 percent.



And the reduction in the annual outlay for court pay could be nearly that much, because records indicate about 90 percent of officers' court appearances during the past two years occurred while they were off duty.