Regarding "Cases, delays grow in criminal courts" (Monday Front Page), compliments to Brian Rogers on a fine article about an important issue. Most compelling to me was the huge number of suspects who remain in jail until their trial. Based on the information in the article, it suggests that over 40% of the 44,000 felony suspects in Harris County this next year will be "lingering in jail and......may wait years for the case to go to trial, plead out or get dismissed."
A little research shows that if Harris County's historical conviction rate of just over 50% applies, that roughly 8,000 suspects who will be judged innocent in the next year will nonetheless be imprisoned for long periods of time. Extrapolate that nationwide, and the number grows to the hundreds of thousands every year. For a justice system that proclaims itself the fairest in the world, this is an outrage, yet nobody does anything about it.
Ironically, the article suggests that defense attorneys are as responsible for trial delays as the prosecution and our courts. Since all these parties are gainfully employed in the criminal prosecution business, they are the beneficiaries of the snail's pace of our courts. Could that explain why little is done to fix the problem?
Pete Smith
Cypress
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