New courtroom opens to help courts deal with COVID safety concerns

A new courtroom, one built with COVID-19 safety measures in mind, hosted its first trial this week, thanks to a whirlwind of work from contractors and in the midst of a growing backlog of trials.

While it may not have been designed to host a court of law, the property at 2404 Chandler Court SW in Olympia has enough space to hold a trial while keeping everyone socially distant.

When county officials signed a two-year lease on the property on Sept. 15, they initially had a goal of opening it up by November. However, when the deadline to spend federal CARES Act funding was pushed back until the end of the year, that goal was somewhat relaxed. Still, project lead Chris Helmer, in an interview with The JOLT in October, said he was shooting to get the site finished before November.

The opening date was pushed back a month, after supply chain issues delayed construction. Some items had to be custom made and sent, and Helmer, in a previous interview, said those items were taking a while to arrive. Those items included toilets and holding cell parts needed for the corrections wing of the building. Helmer said the last things to be completed in the building were mainly related to information technology.

It takes more than just a courtroom to make a trial run, so the contractor, Northway Construction, and numerous subcontractors have been working extensively to prepare rooms for jury services and deliberation, office spaces for the district and superior courts and holding areas for inmates.

The property on Chandler Court was ready to go by December, with a substantial amount of the work being completed by Nov. 15, said Helmer on Tuesday afternoon.

The first trial to take place in the building started on Monday — a non-jury trial between the state of Washington and political activist Tim Eyman (see sidebar).

This marks the first time since March that Thurston County has been capable of running two jury trials at one time. Normally, three to four trials can run at the same time, but only one room in the courthouse is large enough to hold a trial and allow social distancing.

Thurston County Superior Court Administrator Pam Hartman-Beyer said, most criminal cases are resolved before going to trial at all. However, it’s often after a trial is scheduled that a case is resolved. Putting a trial on the calendar tends to prompt a settlement. Hartman-Beyer, in an interview in November, said that after trials were allowed to resume, most criminal cases were settled before getting to a courtroom.

In March the state supreme court suspended trials across the state until July, because of the risk of spreading the virus. When trials were allowed to resume again, local officials voiced safety concerns, prompting trials to be placed on hold again, until August. In the meantime, a backlog of cases was growing, reaching as many as 972 criminal cases in September. Civil matters, likewise, have been stacking up.

As The JOLT previously reported, that put many inmates between a rock and a hard place. Without trials, cases weren’t being resolved, meaning people behind bars who couldn’t afford to pay their bail have had to wait in jail for potentially months longer than normal.