Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County will see the fewest new criminal cases filed in decades as the coronavirus pandemic continues to gum-up the criminal justice system, reports Cleveland.com. Just over 7,100 indictments and criminal informations were filed as of mid-December, a decrease of nearly 40 percent compared to 2019′s total, and the first time since at least 2000 that the court will see fewer than 10,000 filings. The court published monthly reports on its website until February, the last month before Ohio’s pandemic shutdowns began that were typically more than 40 pages long and included graphs and data about the caseload. Cleveland.com requested the unpublished reports since February. A spokesman provided a one-page Word document containing the number of indictments and informations filed through Dec. 17.
The drop in filings and trials came during a year in which courts across the U.S. scrambled to respond to a virus that has killed more than 300,000 people in the U.S. and infected more than 17 million. Cuyahoga County court set a moratorium on jury trials from March 16 through Sept. 21, and then held a handful of trials each week before judges suspended trials in early November after a second statewide surge of the virus. Since 2000, the court has seen an average of just over 14,209 criminal cases each year. Prosecutors last year filed 11,812 cases. As of Dec. 17, the clerk’s office had accepted just 7,108, the lowest number since at least 2000. The number of trials plummeted in 2020 from an average of 328 jury trials annually from 2010 through 2018 to just 76 this year. For 35 weeks, — the court operated under a moratorium on jury trials as an effort to prevent spreading the coronavirus.