The number of criminal cases awaiting resolution in Wentworth County Superior Court has climbed to roughly 6,200, court records show, a backlog that has stretched the average wait for a felony trial to nearly fourteen months.

Wentworth County Superior Court is now carrying roughly 6,200 pending criminal cases, a 38 percent increase over three years, according to figures released this week by court administrator Stanley Uhle. The average wait for a felony trial has stretched to nearly fourteen months, up from about eight, and civil litigants are waiting even longer.

Presiding Judge Coretta Malveaux attributed the backlog to a convergence of pressures: two of the court’s nine judgeships have sat vacant for more than a year awaiting state appointments, a regional shortage of certified court reporters has forced hearing cancellations, and criminal filings have grown steadily as the county’s population rebounds.

A courtroom without a court reporter is just a very expensive meeting room. There are mornings we have judges ready, lawyers ready, defendants ready, and no one who can make the record.

Coretta Malveaux, presiding judge, Wentworth County Superior Court

The delays ripple far beyond the courthouse. Defendants who cannot afford bail wait out those fourteen months at the county jail, where the pending-case pileup is a major driver of a population that recently hit a five-year high. Victims and witnesses, prosecutors say, become harder to locate as cases age, and memories fade before testimony is ever given.

Prosecutors and defenders both feel the squeeze

District Attorney Vivian Ashcroft said her office has begun offering earlier plea negotiations in a wider range of cases, in part to keep the calendar from collapsing under its own weight. “I don’t love that scheduling pressure is a factor in how cases resolve,” Ashcroft said. “But pretending it isn’t a factor would be worse.”

Chief Public Defender Harriet Voss said the backlog cuts both ways for her clients. Some benefit from delay as cases weaken; many more simply wait in custody. “The Constitution promises a speedy trial,” Voss said. “Fourteen months is nobody’s definition of speedy.”

Ehle, a private defense attorney who handles felony cases across the county, said the scheduling crunch has changed how he advises clients. “I have clients taking pleas they might not take in a functioning system, because the alternative is another year in limbo,” he said. “That should trouble everyone, whichever side of the courtroom you sit on.”

Relief is uncertain

Uhle said the court has applied to the state’s judicial council for a visiting judge to sit in Bellwater for at least six months, and has raised court-reporter pay twice in an effort to fill four vacant positions. The court is also piloting remote proceedings for routine pretrial hearings, which Uhle estimates could free up the equivalent of one courtroom’s calendar.

The two vacant judgeships remain the biggest wild card. Appointments rest with the governor’s office, and Malveaux said the court has received no timeline. “We have been told we are a priority,” she said. “We have been told that for some time.”

Even routine functions are showing strain. Jury selection has slowed as summons response rates decline, a problem court officials have separately flagged as they struggle to seat panels for the trials that do go forward. Clerk’s office staff describe filing queues that back up for weeks after any system outage.

Renovation work looming at the century-old courthouse could complicate matters further, with some courtrooms expected to close temporarily during construction. Malveaux said the court is negotiating the phasing to protect trial capacity. “We will not trade the backlog for scaffolding,” she said. “We can’t afford to lose a single courtroom-day we don’t have to.”

The civil side waits longest

While criminal cases take scheduling priority under state speedy-trial rules, the civil docket has absorbed much of the collateral damage. Uhle’s figures show more than 3,000 pending civil matters, with contested cases now averaging 22 months to trial. Landlord-tenant disputes, contract fights between local businesses and personal-injury claims all sit in the same queue. “Every criminal trial we prioritize is a civil trial we postpone,” Uhle said. “The math is unforgiving.”

The delays carry a price tag for the county as well. Uhle estimated that overtime for clerks and bailiffs, extended jury costs and repeated hearing continuances add roughly $900,000 a year in avoidable expense. The court’s budget request for the coming cycle seeks funding for two additional clerk positions and a digital case-management upgrade that Uhle said would eliminate much of the manual re-scheduling work that consumes staff time after every continuance.

For people caught in the queue, the numbers translate into lives on hold. Ehle described a client who lost a job offer because a pending felony charge — one ultimately dismissed — showed up in a background check for the entire fourteen months the case sat on the calendar. “The process has become the punishment,” he said. “Dismissed on day 400 is not the same as dismissed on day 90, no matter what the docket says.”

Malveaux said the court will publish quarterly backlog figures going forward, a step she acknowledged was prompted in part by outside scrutiny. “Sunlight is fair,” she said. “The public pays for this system. They’re entitled to know how far behind it’s running, and they’re entitled to hold all of us — the courts, the state, the county — accountable for catching up.”