I got a speeding ticket in Texas in December 2019. My lawyer requested a court hearing / jury trial.
The Court has been rescheduling the hearing/appearance date multiple times due to Covid. Each time the date is pushed back a few weeks; and now they have indicated that the hearing date is indeterminate. My lawyer is pretty good and keeps on top of all the changes.
I am wondering if this is the norm elsewhere in the country, and how courts are dealing with piling up cases ?
My son got a speeding ticket in New York in March 2020, right before the pandemic. His hearing was rescheduled multiple times - it was scheduled for October 2021 and this week he received a notice that it was rescheduled for August 2022, this time via video ( the others were rescheduled to in-person hearings). I’m really wondering if this will be any speedy trial requirements as it will be nearly 2.5 years between the incident and the hearing.
I also got a traffic ticket in Texas. The lady who cut my hair was married to a lawyer, and he took my “case.” He requested a court hearing, said we needed time to prepare, then started rescheduling it. From what I remember, he said after two or three reschedulings, the judge just goes ahead and drops it. Now, this was back in the day, 40-45 years ago, so it may have changed.
I don’t know about traffic cases, but regular cases are a scheduling nightmare. I have a pretty routine case in federal court in the Eastern District of Washington that has been re-set twice due to COVID, most recently moved from next month to March 2022. We also have a trial that was scheduled in Alaska state court that has been put off for over a year, with no firm date in sight. Trials in Seattle are progressing, often remotely (Zoom), but there are certainly delays.
Related: My Canadian work permit expired last March, and I’m now on my second temporary extension due to COVID-related delays on the paperwork. It doesn’t affect me too much, except that I can’t go back to visit family back in the US because if I leave the county it’s viewed as if I’ve abandoned my work permit renewal.
Time is kind of on your side in these things. Police turnover is high, here in North Carolina it’s around 14% annually. An officer who has retired or moved to another agency or gone into non-governmental work and is not available to testify works in your favor.
Im guessing that the safety of court workers/participants will trump the 6th Amendment right of defendants who are also vulnerable to the Covid virus. Emergencies can trump constitutional rights. A draft is one example.