COLUMBUS, Ohio — The rising homicides in the city of Columbus are not only putting a strain on families, the community and investigators but also on the court system.
“When there’s crime in the community, and it’s serious crime, this is the landing spot,” said Franklin County First Assistant Prosecutor Janet Grubb. “As these numbers add up, we just keep taking on more and more water and not sending a lot of them out the other end because the court is not working full-time.”
And that serious crime has been on the rise in Columbus in 2021. The city recently marked its 175th homicide, nearing the record high of 178 reached in 2020. And felonious assaults have topped 1,250 so far.
“We expect that we will probably crest 200 homicides this year, which is a big number for us,” Grubb said. “We have some senior prosecutors with 15 or more cases. We have young prosecutors with four, five, six cases.”
Still, that caseload is not enough to dig out of a major backlog.
Franklin County currently has 192 untried homicides cases, with 82 of those indictments being handed up this year.
“We’ve actually been trying cases that were from the late 20-teens,” Grubb said. “We have cases still pending that are three and four years old. And, for whatever reason, they haven’t gone to trial yet.”
Grubb and Franklin County Common Pleas Court Administrative Judge Stephen McIntosh pointed to a number of factors for the backlog, including the pandemic putting many cases on hold, the transition to a new prosecutor and the rising homicide rate.
“It’s very concerning, at both ends,” Judge McIntosh said. “We have individuals in jail that may be sitting in jail for a longer period of time before they can have their day in court, and that should not be the case. And then, as you indicated, we have victims’ families that have been waiting and waiting for their day in court as well, and we don’t want to see any of that.”
Right now, the common pleas judges are rotating weeks for jury trials, and that means the court is far from business as usual. But Judge McIntosh says the judges in his court are now able to start taking on more cases, up from two to three per week to potentially four to five.
“We’re doing everything that we can to make sure that people are safe, that trials can be conducted when they are scheduled and that anyone participating in the system knows and understands that we’re doing everything that we can to move the cases as expeditiously as we can, preserving the rights of the defendant, as well as the rights of the victim,” the judge said.
Editor's Note: 10TV previously reported the highest number of homicides recorded in Columbus in a calendar year was 175 (reported in 2020). The Columbus Division of Police issued an update on Nov. 19, saying its records changed to reflect 177 homicides that occurred last year due to delayed deaths and one reclassification.