The Federal Judiciary Emergency Special Sessions Act of 2005: Allowing Ongoing Criminal Prosecutions During Crisis or Hindering Compliance with the Speedy Trial Act?

• Author: Karen L. Helgeson
• Position: J.D. Candidate, The University of Iowa College of Law, 2007; B.A., Wellesley College, 2002
• Pages: 247-270

J.D. Candidate, The University of Iowa College of Law, 2007; B.A., Wellesley College, 2002. I wish to thank my parents, Gary and Glenda Helgeson, for their support and encouragement during the writing and editing of this Note. I also appreciate Professor James Tomkovicz's valuable insights on an earlier draft. Finally, I am grateful to the editors and student writers of Volumes 91 and 92 of the Iowa Law Review for their thoughtful comments on, thorough edits of, and sustained enthusiasm for this Note.

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I Introduction

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi on August 29, 2005.¹ The storm itself caused widespread destruction, which was exacerbated by levee breaches and large-scale flooding along the Gulf Coast.² Cities on the coast came to a standstill, and the availability of government services to citizens slowed.³ Legal services in the region came to an indefinite stop and are still slowly recovering.⁴

Tales of lengthy detentions, missing evidence, and hasty hearings have emerged from New Orleans, Biloxi, and other Gulf Coast court systems.⁵ As reported from New Orleans:

In the flooded basement of the criminal courthouse, guns, drugs and other evidence soaked for weeks and could be ruined. Witnesses and defendants alike fled the city to far-flung refuges. The fraction of New Orleans' 475,000 residents who returned aren't [sic] nearly enough to fill jury pools. Judges are holdingPage 248 court without dockets, hearing whatever [sic] attorneys happen to show up.⁶

The primary fear is that criminal prosecutions will have to be abandoned for lack of evidence or testimony.⁷ Minimally, the New Orleans criminal district court clerk can boast that "[n]othing floated away [from its evidence room]-that's the No. 1 good news."⁸ However, little else inspires optimism about the current legal situation in hurricane-affected areas.

In an attempt to reestablish judicial functions in the region, Congress responded to the hurricane with the Federal Judiciary Emergency Special Sessions Act of 2005 ("Emergency Special Sessions Act").⁹ The new statute allows federal courts to relocate physically in the aftermath of an emergency.¹⁰ The legislation demonstrates a trend in increased government actions specifically designed to respond to large-scale disaster situations.¹¹ This recent upswing in emergency legislation is likely a byproduct of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent call for the federal government to engage aggressively in emergency planning.¹² Legislators do, however, recognize the wider application of these measures to other traumas-including natural disasters.¹³

Unfortunately, brand-new emergency statutes, like the Emergency Special Sessions Act, often create more problems than they relieve.¹⁴ First, new statutes may unintentionally conflict with preexisting legislation.¹⁵Page 249 Second, Congress often rushes and fails to debate general emergency legislation thoroughly.¹⁶ Third, emergency legislation tends to outlive the emergency that it was created to address and remedy.¹⁷ The resulting emergency-driven statutes, passed by legislators who ignore or fail to foresee these problems, produce long-lasting legal and policy implications.¹⁸

Congress's leadership expressly passed the Emergency Special Sessions Act to facilitate continuous criminal prosecutions during Hurricane Katrina's recovery period.¹⁹ This Note examines the application of the Emergency Special Sessions Act to criminal prosecutions. Namely, this Note examines the interplay between the Emergency Special Sessions Act and the Speedy Trial Act of 1974 ("Speedy Trial Act") and assesses the new statute's likelihood of success in achieving its legislative goal.

Part II analyzes both the Emergency Special Sessions Act and the Speedy Trial Act's structures and texts and provides a summary of their legislative histories.²⁰ The analysis of both statutes reveals a broad and consistent legislative goal but vastly different methodologies.²¹ Where the Emergency Special Sessions Act provides federal courts with new flexibilityPage 250 to manage their caseloads during emergencies, the Speedy Trial Act constricts flexibility by binding federal courts to a prosecution timeline with only a few exceptions.²²

Part III addresses both the immediate and the potential long-term impacts of these statutes when applied in combination.²³ The Emergency Special Sessions Act creates only an illusion of mobility; criminal defendants must consent to relocations of their trials, which they have little incentive to do.²⁴ Thus, federal courts face a strategic challenge.²⁵ On the one hand, they can opt to keep criminal and civil proceedings in their home jurisdiction despite emergency conditions. On the other hand, federal courts can choose to relocate civil proceedings under the Emergency Special Sessions Act while remaining bound to hold criminal proceedings in their home jurisdiction- the likely outcome if criminal defendants deny consent to relocate. In utilizing this option, the federal courts will then have to concoct compelling reasons for delay under the Speedy Trial Act, the federal statute that dictates a timeline for criminal prosecutions.²⁶ The courts will need to seek Speedy Trial Act continuances to delay hearings and to keep alleged criminals incarcerated.²⁷ However, the Speedy Trial Act prohibits extension requests solely for docket management.²⁸ Thus, as the emergency slowly abates, the courts will need to offer increasingly creative explanations to fit within the narrow statutory exceptions that allow continuances. Otherwise, criminal charges will lapse under the requirements of the Speedy Trial Act.²⁹ The practical limitations of the Speedy Trial Act undermine Congress's goals forPage 251 the special-sessions legislation and leave federal courts with a new, but completely unusable, jurisdictional statute.³⁰

Chief Judge Calvin Johnson of the New Orleans Criminal District Court remarked that the hurricane's effect on the legal system has been severe.³¹ He said, "We have experienced, for the first time in this country, a nuclear winter."³² The delay in legal proceedings has already provoked intense criticism from nongovernmental observers:

The result [of the hurricane's disruption of the Gulf Coast legal system] is many prisoners have spent more time behind bars than would have been required if found guilty of the offense for which they were originally detained. The situation, as observed by a Human Rights Watch spokesperson "makes a mockery of due process."³³

This Note concludes that the Federal Judiciary Emergency Special Sessions Act of 2005 does not provide the comprehensive remedy demanded by Gulf Coast courts.³⁴ Rather, the legislation masquerades as a quick fix for the immediate problem. The Act does little more than make lawmakers feel like active participants in the relief effort.

II Background

In broad terms, the two statutes traced in this Note appear to share the same goal-judicial efficiency. The Emergency Special Sessions Act allows federal courts to shift locations during crises, so that court functions are only minimally disrupted.³⁵ The Speedy Trial Act provides a calendar of deadlines to ensure that judicial processes keep progressing toward a final decision.³⁶ However, this Part reveals that, though the statutes share a common goal, the means employed demonstrate a sharp contrast. One statute provides the option of flexibility, while the other offers rigidity. Later, this Note illustrates how the flexibility and rigidity of these acts have the potential to collide, undermining their united goal of judicial efficiency.

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A Options for Federal Court Jurisdiction Relocation Before September 2005

Prior to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, the United States Code did not provide federal courts with the option to relocate outside of their jurisdiction, even if natural disasters or similar emergencies rendered their facilities unusable.³⁷ The applicable Code provisions limited federal court locations.³⁸ The law gave minimal flexibility to the district courts and the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Federal Circuits, by providing them with a discrete set of cities in which to situate.³⁹ The paralyzing effects on the southern United States during the 2005 hurricane season, however, ignited Congress to overhaul these sections of the Code to provide more location...