Courtroom crunch: With rising cases and shrinking space, Lincoln County looks for answers

Lincoln County had to hold a jury trial recently – and there was no place to do it.

Nearly an hour of conversations later, Judge Robin Houwman had a resolution: The trial would be held in Minnehaha County instead.

“And it’s not the first time we’ve had to do that,” said Houwman, the presiding judge for the Second Judicial Circuit, which includes Lincoln and Minnehaha counties.

Moving a jury trial one county north isn’t as simple as it might sound. There are staff to involve, jurors to notify, witnesses to be subpoenaed.

“We’ve got to scramble here to make sure we have the right space,” Houwman said.

That has become a theme this year – she called it a weekly challenge – as cases in fast-growing Lincoln County are surging.

From July 1, 2020, through April 30, the overall caseload is up 45 percent.

“It’s really an increase in everything,” Houwman said. “When we look at just the year 2020, Lincoln County was the only county in the state whose caseload grew.”

And this year, it’s really growing. For instance, the county filed traffic ticket No. 1,613 on April 29. Last year, that same number was filed June 24. As of April 30, there were 87 divorce cases filed, compared with 60 for the same time last year.

There were 409 small claims filed through April 30 compared with 351 in the first four months of 2020.

There was a 30 percent increase in felony cases. Pre-COVID, increases were seen in meth possession. Post-COVID, it’s assault-related behavior, she said.

And outside of COVID, population growth drives crime too.

“Families are going to have divorces, custody disputes, car accidents; they will get a DUI; they will get speeding tickets … so when you see population growth, it’s pretty natural that will result in growth in everything that comes before judges in a courthouse,” Houwman said.

Projections are even more striking. Earlier this year – when cases were tracking up 19 percent – Houwman did an analysis and found that at current growth rates, Lincoln County would have the same volume of cases as Pennington County in five years.

Now that cases are up 45 percent, that window cuts in half.

While the mix of cases will differ between the two counties, it’s still worth noting that Pennington currently has 10 courtrooms; Lincoln County has 2.5. Pennington County has a dozen judges; Lincoln County has one full-time judge, “and based on the growth, it would be almost malpractice for me to not request an additional circuit court judge and an additional magistrate judge for Canton who probably would be half-time in Sioux Falls and half-time in Lincoln County,” Houwman said.

The calendar is full enough that someone entering a guilty plea in late April was looking at a June sentencing date. The schedule for family or civil matters also is booked out more than a month.

“Judge Houwman deserves a special shout-out because she’s taken the time and interest to put a ton of thought into this, and I respect her for that,” said County Commissioner Jim Schmidt.

“We’re up against the wall. We really have to have this. The court demands this.”

Conditions are worse than most people likely realize, he added.

“We’ve had bats in the rooms. We spent money on bat-proofing it; that hasn’t really helped,” Schmidt said.

“A judge slipped because of water coming in. We are totally out of space.”

In November 2020, Lincoln County tried and failed to pass a $50 million bond to build a public safety center and repair the courthouse.

That has led to renting space at the Minnehaha County Jail and forced an ongoing Band-Aid-like approach to juggling court time.

A committee has been meeting to try to hone in on a better, long-term solution. Houwman estimates six to eight courtrooms will be needed over the next 20 years.

There’s a desire to maintain the old courthouse, she said, but it also makes sense to put a jail and a courthouse close together. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of cases also occur north of 274th Street, making Canton a less-than-convenient location for many.

“I just want the public to be informed about this issue and be involved,” Houwman said. “If we have to do some temporary fixes, it’s going to cost millions to design and structure a facility that is not going to meet the needs of the community long term. We try to be very South Dakotan about things and make do and figure out new and innovative ways to get by, but we’re kind of at the end of our rope in figuring out how to get by with what we have.”