The Desert Advocate

Editor | Links | Contact Us | Home

Classifieds | News | Events

Napolitano ends experiment
Governor’s veto stops jury trials in CPS case
by Paul Davenport

Associated Press

ARIZONA – Gov. Janet Napolitano’s veto of a bipartisan bill passed by the Legislature will end an experiment that has given Arizona parents a right the past 2 ½ years to have a jury decide whether to sever parental rights to abused or neglected children.

Supporters of the extension said jury trials provided a safeguard to families treated unfairly while critics said providing that right burdened a system that struggles to keep up with all the cases in which children need protection.

The right to a jury trial if requested was approved by lawmakers–and signed into law by Napolitano–during a 2003 special session that largely focused on measures to bolster Child Protective Services, a Department of Economic Security unit that handles cases involving abused or neglected children.

Most of the 2003 special session legislation on CPS came from recommendations of a commission appointed by Napolitano and was aimed at strengthening CPS’ authority and ability for intervention to protect children. The legislation directed CPS to investigate all cases of reported abuse and neglect and provided the agency with additional dollars to pay for more employees and other costs involved.

The right to a jury trial was not one of the commission’s recommendations but was added in negotiations between Napolitano and legislators.

The bill vetoed Wednesday by Napolitano would have extended the experiment through 2009. Without the extension, the experiment will expire on Dec. 31.

Napolitano said she vetoed the extension because the experiment has produced little gain but “significant disruptions” to courts through increased costs and delays.

Sharing concerns voiced last year by a child advocacy group, Napolitano said cases decided by juries have roughly the same outcomes as cases decided by judges. However, a lot of time and money is wasted because jury trials require extra preparations and many parents who request jury trials don’t follow through, Napolitano said.

According to legislative hearing testimony, there were 36 jury trials conducted as of Jan. 1 but a total of 335 were requested.

The vetoed bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Rep. Mark Anderson of Mesa, said he wasn’t surprised by the veto because the bill had been scaled back during consideration by the Legislature to delete a $1.2 million appropriation for a proposed mediation program to avert the need for jury trials and to pay for state lawyers to handle the added workload presented by jury trials.

Both of those steps – the mediation program and the additional attorneys–were attempts to respond to criticisms of how the experiment was working, and opposition to the bill grew as the changes were made, Anderson said.

“The bill was going to address the real problem. The real problem was not that you have a jury trial. The real problem is that people don’t show up for jury trials. It’s a waste of time and effort,” Anderson said.

Anderson noted that Napolitano’s criticism of the experiment largely tracked a 2005 report in which the Children’s Action Alliance called for elimination of the right to a jury trial.

The report said nearly identical percentages of cases tried by judges (95 percent) and juries (94 percent) ended with termination of parental rights. Meanwhile, only 13 percent of the cases in which jury trials were requested actually went to juries, the report said.

Unfortunately, “the vast majorityof these parents that we’re talking about are bad parents essentially and there’s a reason why their children are being removed,” Anderson said.

However, the experiment still was worth extending, he said.

“Of all the CPS caseworkers, there could be a small number who are either incompetent or unethical and use their position to advance their own agenda,” Anderson said. “It’s for those few cases–that’s why the founders created this whole check and balance system.”

Back To Community