Alameda County DA Price is working to eliminate the criminal case backlog

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price said her office is working to address a backlog of misdemeanor and domestic violence cases that her office identified both early last year and over the summer.

“We found that it appears to have always been a manual process, and one of the major deficiencies is that when cases come into the DA’s office, there is no mechanism or process to actually record the date of the incident “he said DA Prize.

Prosecutors said a lack of dating of case files resulted in hundreds exceeding the statute of limitations, meaning those cases could no longer be prosecuted.

While the District Attorney’s Office said the domestic violence backlog was established in April 2023 and the misdemeanor backlog was established this summer, it appears that the District Attorney’s Office has never publicly discussed any of the backlog issues to date.

The prosecutor’s news conference comes after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that more than 1,000 misdemeanor criminal cases have expired since Attorney Price took office.

The district attorney’s office denied these statistics, saying the backlog was there before she became district attorney.

“It was not a process or an issue that was disclosed to me when I came into this office. As the public should know, there was no transition from my predecessor, who we have previously said was truly a disservice to the community and a disservice to public safety,” DA Price said.

The Chronicle interviewed former prosecutor Nancy O’Malley, who denied the allegations. Steven Clark, a former prosecutor in Santa Clara County, told me that no matter when the backlog started, DA Price has been in office long enough to fix it.

“As the attorney responsible for a case, it is your duty to ensure that the statute of limitations is followed. They don’t blame someone else,” Clark said.

Clark said adhering to the statute of limitations is the first and most important rule every prosecutor must follow.

“It’s similar to checking an airplane pilot’s fuel gauge after takeoff. You have to do that before taking off because that’s the system we have. “You don’t have a case if you don’t file it on time,” Clark said.

Clark said it was unacceptable to blame a bureaucratic expert for allowing hundreds of cases to slip through the cracks.

“It is inexcusable that this happened. Filing these misdemeanor cases is tedious and mundane, but at the same time it is an essential part of being a district attorney,” Clark said.

DA Price said her office will hire additional staff to address the backlog and develop an efficient calendar system.

“On Monday we will be appointing three staff members and by then, Senior Prosecutor Poppas will be in a position to create this color-coded system that she introduced back in August,” said DA Price.

When Attorney Price was asked how this color-coding system would work, she said it was not her responsibility.