During the past 21 months of the ongoing global pandemic, which has infected more than 50 million people in the U.S. and has killed more than 800,000, the District Court of the Eastern District of Arkansas has operated under varying restrictions designed to protect the health and safety of courthouse workers, judges, juries, defendants, petitioners and the public.
A point of pride at the courthouse, according to District Court Clerk Tammy Downs is that throughout the pandemic, despite temporary suspensions of grand juries, jury trials and an exponential increase in video hearings, the Richard Sheppard Arnold Federal Courthouse in Little Rock has remained open for business.
Although Downs' office bears much of the responsibility for ensuring the smooth operation of judicial proceedings in the district, she credits the seven district judges and six magistrate judges who serve the district with coordinating their schedules to help minimize any risk of infection.
"When the court resumed jury trials they made a commitment to stagger their start times," Downs said. "So we've had staggered jury trials, and they've kind of self-policed and they've been the traffic cop, so to speak."
Downs said where the court would normally hold a mass jury orientation and send prospective juries off to different courtrooms, the judges have adopted a staggered system bringing in individual jury pools for each case as a way of limiting the number of people in one area at a time.
In cases where multiple trials are scheduled for the same week, she said, one judge will hold jury orientation in the morning and another will repeat the process in the afternoon, while another will begin jury selection later in the week.
Downs said instead of placing jurors in standard jury rooms for deliberations, the courthouse makes use of other courtrooms to give jurors room to spread out.
"That's been different for us to have trials starting on Monday morning, Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning and Wednesday," she said. "But that's sort of how it's managed."
At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. issued an administrative order placing a moratorium on civil trials and large public events, and authorized criminal proceedings to be held via videoconferencing to the greatest extent possible through the end of April 2020.
As the virus continued to spread and infections increased, Marshall continually monitored the situation and has issued a total of 18 administrative orders to modify and adjust court operations during the pandemic.
In 2020, nine civil and criminal trials were held between mid-June and the end of September before rising infections forced those proceedings to be halted. During 2021, including three pilot trials held in March and April before the resumption of trials in May, 38 criminal and civil trials have been conducted at the courthouse.
Earlier this month, Marshall issued Administrative Order 18, authorizing felony plea and sentencing hearings to continue being held remotely as necessary until March 18.
"Remote proceedings," Marshall said in the order, "especially in criminal cases, are an essential part of reducing the virus risk while continuing full operations during the winter months."
Masks continue to be required in all public areas regardless of vaccination status, and social distancing and sanitation protocols will continue to be followed, Marshall said.
Criminal case filings in the district, which increased dramatically in 2018 as former U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland emphasized federal gun crimes prosecutions under the Project Safe Neighborhoods banner, have slowed but have continued at a high level under U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ross, who took over from Hiland last January.
In fiscal 2017, which ran from Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30, 2017, 282 criminal cases were filed by the U.S. attorney's office. The next year, that number increased to 516, then 659 in fiscal 2019.
In fiscal 2020, with the pandemic beginning midway through the year, case filings dropped to 537, then to 492 in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30.
Ross said the pandemic did have an effect but it only magnified what was already destined to be a slowdown in cases filed because of the sheer volume of gun cases moving through the courts beginning in 2019.
"I think it's important to remember that even after the pandemic began, our total number of cases is well above what it was three years before the pandemic," Ross said. "It would be easy to draw a conclusion that covid slowed everything down, but the dramatic increase in the office caseload created its own congestion effect."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Givens echoed Ross' analysis, saying much of the court's calendar has been driven by the maturation of the large number of federal gun cases filed in 2018 and 2019 that are now reaching resolution.
"The second half of 2021 has definitely been more challenging to us from a time management viewpoint," Givens said. "We've done more trials this year than we generally ever do."
Givens said he has argued five criminal trials in 2021, the most in a single year he has ever prosecuted in his 11 years with the U.S. attorney's office.
"Five trials may not seem like a lot in a year for one attorney," Givens said. "But a typical trial lasts three to five days, plus there's another two to three weeks of prep time, so to do a trial properly takes about a month. If you do five or six that's half the year taken up just with trials."
At the office of the U.S. Marshals Service in Little Rock, Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Jay Tuck said that despite the changing conditions and various orders from the court, his office has functioned much as always, with a couple of exceptions.
The U.S. Marshals Service provides numerous services, including transportation and security of federal prisoners and defendants in federal prosecutions.
Tuck said many of the county jails that the federal government contracts with to hold federal prisoners have assisted in transportation of federal defendants and inmates for about the past four years.
"At one point in this district, we did everything," Tuck said. "Then we slowly started switching over based on workload and staffing, both of which factor into it, to include that in the contracts with the jails."
Tuck said the major effect an increase in trials would have is that during trials -- particularly criminal trials -- requiring the presence of the U.S. Marshals Service, any deputies assigned to those trials are tied up for a matter of days or even weeks. Two or more trials going at once, he said, present logistical challenges not present in most hearings.
High profile civil trials that have the potential to draw demonstrators to the courthouse also require a presence, Tuck said, to ensure that court security is maintained.
To date, Downs said, although there have been a number of courthouse employees who have tested positive for covid-19 during the past 21 months, there has been no evidence that the virus has been spread inside the courthouse complex, which she attributed to the safety precautions that have been in effect throughout the pandemic.