LAFAYETTE — The light glowing in Judge Laura Zeman's Tippecanoe Superior 4 office window after hours means she's working late. She does that a lot now because of the drug problem here.
Misdemeanor drugs charges, such as possession of marijuana and possession of spice, which is called synthetic marijuana, land in Zeman's court. So do the low-level drug felony charges such as dealing spice and possession of heroin, cocaine, meth or controlled substance.
"Holy smokes!" she said Wednesday as she talked about the court's overworked staff. "Now I know why I’ve been staying here until 8 o’clock every night trying to get orders done, why the court reporters are slammed.
"That’s like an 80 percent increase in caseload, but we don’t have an 80 percent increase in our court staff or the hours in a week or the number of hours in a day."
Much like automobile mechanics have a chart that prescribes how many hours of labor should be billed for a specific repair, the courts have what is called a weighted caseload, Zeman said, explaining that specific cases are assigned how many minutes it should take from start to finish.
For example, a murder case, which takes more time to prosecute, has more minutes allotted to weighted caseload than a misdemeanor possession of marijuana case.
In Superior 4, the weighted caseload is 81,964 minutes for this first six months, Zeman said. Calculating the average work week and 26 weeks, there are only 58,500 workable minutes in six months.
Just a few years ago, these numbers were unimaginable.