Coronavirus shutdown of jury trials upends California’s federal courts

LOS ANGELES — Ronald Ware spent five months in a Santa Ana jail awaiting trial after his arrest in Brea last summer on a federal gun charge.

His day in court never came. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed the case in January, saying emergency rules that shut down federal jury trials during the pandemic had denied Ware his right to a speedy trial.

“Nowhere in the Constitution is there an exception for times of emergency or crisis,” Carney wrote in the ruling that set Ware free.

Carney has tossed criminal charges against a jewelry-store robbery suspect and three others for the same reason. The decision to shut down all jury trials, he found, was excessive.

The 13-month suspension of trials in the federal court system’s Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and six neighboring counties, has disrupted the prosecution of hundreds of alleged drug dealers, tax cheats, cybercriminals, child porn purveyors and health insurance swindlers. It has clogged the courts with an unprecedented backlog of both criminal and civil cases.

While many of those charged with crimes have been free on bail as they await trial, others have remained behind bars, enduring long stretches of solitude as detainees are kept apart to minimize spread of the coronavirus.

Guan Lei, a Chinese scholar in the U.S. for research at UCLA, has been detained for eight months on a charge of destroying a hard drive in an attempt to obstruct a federal investigation.

After two postponements, Guan’s scheduled May 4 trial will have to be delayed again, because Los Angeles federal court will not yet be open. Guan appeared at a court hearing Thursday by video from a downtown L.A. jail.

“Mr. Guan, I’m very sorry it’s taken this long to give you a trial,” U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald told him.

Case dismissals have been rare; prosecutors have appealed Carney’s decisions. But an increasing number of defendants are alleging violations of their speedy trial rights, casting uncertainty over their cases as the pandemic subsides and federal courts prepare to reopen. Criminal defendants have the right to a trial within a set time period. In federal court, if they invoke that right, their trial generally must start within 70 days of when charges were filed. Typically, judges grant requests for more time to prepare for trial.

One of the next defendants to seek dismissal of charges on speedy trial grounds in federal court will be Jerome Terry, who has been jailed for three years awaiting trial. He was arrested in connection with his alleged role in a sex-trafficking conspiracy in which two aspiring Canadian models were forced to work as prostitutes in the Hollywood Hills.

Terry’s trial was most recently put off until July. “There’s this general feeling of purgatory,” said Meghan Blanco, his attorney.

With nearly 20 million residents, California’s Central District is the country’s most populous federal judicial district, spanning Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.