Threatened with budget cuts if Baltimore's court crisis is not fixed quickly, criminal justice leaders decided yesterday to staff a courtroom in the city jail with two judges while paving the way for reforms to clear a backlog of pending criminal cases.

Prosecutors and judges pledged to phase in reforms that included switching the authority to charge criminal suspects from police to prosecutors, and placing judges at the city jail to hear criminal cases beginning as early as next week.

The decisions were made as lawmakers in Annapolis threatened to withhold $18 million from criminal justice agencies unless immediate changes are made by prosecutors, police, public defenders and judges.

If the changes are made, the lawmakers and other state leaders said the agencies could receive budget increases to resolve the courthouse crisis.

"The more the governor and I see real action , the greater [chance] we can get you the money," Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend told members of the criminal justice coordinating council, a board of judges, lawyers and others created this year to confront the courthouse crisis.

"Get started on this with existing resources," Del. Peter Franchot told the council, which includes Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, State Public Defender Stephen Harris and Baltimore Circuit Judge David B. Mitchell.

In the past two months, according to Mitchell, the backlog has dropped by 400 defendants, a much higher pace than in the same period last year.

Franchot, a Montgomery County Democrat, applauded the reduction of the backlog through the use of retired judges in recent weeks, but he said that a long-term solution to prevent a recurrence of the crisis is vital.

About 5,000 suspects are awaiting trial. The courthouse has been so jammed with criminal cases -- including those involving murder charges -- that some have been dismissed by judges because the cases languished too long.

Yesterday, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III said they would attend future meetings -- an important step for some participants who said privately that Schmoke was shirking his responsibilities by not taking a more active role in resolving the courthouse troubles.

Starting next week, Jessamy said, a prosecutor will begin reviewing charges filed by police shortly after arrests to see if cases will stand up in court. That will be the first step in what Jessamy said will be a takeover of the charging function from police. That move is expected to slash the caseload by removing "junk cases" from the court docket.

About 60 percent of all arrests made by police are not prosecuted because of weak evidence or lack of witness cooperation.

Jessamy said she needs at least 12 additional prosecutors to assume the charging function, which would be a round-the-clock effort. After saying that she could not begin the operation immediately, she agreed yesterday to start next week with a few lawyers and phase in other prosecutors.

Mitchell also said yesterday that, beginning next week, a Circuit Court judge and a District Court judge will be in a courtroom at the city lockup, called Central Booking and Intake Center. Each judge will sit one day each week. Both judges will be "cross-designated," meaning that they can hear felony and misdemeanor cases. But their initial focus will be on felonies.

Mitchell noted that he presided over a case yesterday involving a man accused of forging two Mass Transit Administration bus passes. He had been jailed nearly three weeks because he could not afford bail. Keeping the man in jail costs $55 a day.

In Annapolis yesterday, legislators held hearings on a bill to keep criminal defendants in petty cases from being held for more than a month in pretrial detention.

The proposal would require public defenders to represent indigent defendants at bail hearings. Supporters of the measure told lawmakers it would help clear jammed detention centers and also bring fairness to a process that has imposed long jail stays on defendants in minor cases.

"We're finding that in a large number of cases, people are spending 30 or 40 days in jail and then being told, 'We're not going to prosecute you,' " said University of Maryland law Professor Douglas L. Colbert, who coordinates a project to aid indigent defendants.

The legislators heard from a 33-year-old single mother who spent five days in Central Booking in Baltimore after being arrested on a 2-year-old warrant for allegedly allowing her children to miss too many days of school.

Cheryl Tyndall testified before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee and the House Judiciary Committee in separate hearings that she attended a confusing bail hearing conducted by teleconference with a judge. Without a lawyer, she had to choose between finding money to post $5,000 bail, or sitting behind bars for a month while awaiting trial.

Unable to find the money, she spent five days in jail before Colbert arranged for a lawyer who helped reduce her bail. "I felt like I was helpless," Tyndall said.

The proposal in Annapolis yesterday calls for the state to pay roughly $2 million to enable the Office of the Public Defender to hire 27 lawyers and 30 intake specialists statewide.

A spokesman for Gov. Parris N. Glendening said the governor agrees that more public defenders are needed and will make it a priority when he puts together a supplementary budget.

"He recognizes this is part of the solution to the city's court problem," spokesman Ray Feldmann said. "We expect the governor to fund it, we just don't know yet at what level."

Sun staff writer Matthew Mosk contributed to this article.

Pub Date: 3/11/99