Lancaster case shows dangers of court backlog

Keishawn McManus allegedly killed a man in 2012.

In July of that year, he and another man reportedly shot and killed Timothy Wissinger in his truck on the side of Lamplight Road, the result of a suspected drug-related dispute. McManus was arrested after the murder weapon was reportedly found in his house.

But after waiting more than a year and a half in jail without seeing the inside of a courtroom, he was released in February 2014 on a $50,000 bond.

Then, two days before Christmas, McManus called 911 to say a young woman had committed suicide with a gun in his home on Clyburn Drive in rural Lancaster County. It’s the same house where investigators recovered the gun that allegedly killed Wissinger 29 months earlier.

Law enforcement officers were skeptical, and three weeks later, they issued a warrant for McManus’s arrest on a murder charge, for a second time. He’s been on the run ever since.

The case raises the dangers of the case backlog in the courts of the 6th Judicial Circuit, which has one of the state’s worst backlogs.

New 6th Circuit Solicitor Randy Newman, elected in 2014, ran for office on the promise to reduce that backlog. The killing of 19-year-old Quatavia Robinson raises the specter of just how dangerous the case backlog can be.

“We always ask for bond to be denied on a murder charge,” said Newman, who was previously an assistant solicitor in the circuit that covers Chester, Lancaster and Fairfield counties. “But if the judge decides to let them out, we can’t really argue with him.”

The 6th Circuit has the largest backlog in the state with more than 5,000 cases pending, and an average of 150 new cases landing on prosecutors’ desks in a month. That doesn’t leave solicitors much time to catch up with a docket of cases that includes some arrests initially made in the 1990s. Only 30 percent of cases in the circuit make it to court within a year of being added to the docket – the lowest rate in the state by 19 percentage points – and only 26 percent in Lancaster County.

The 16th Circuit, which includes York County, has the fastest rate of moving cases, with 93 percent going before a judge within a year.

“We only have one week of court a month,” Newman said. “And one violent crime case can take a week to try... I’ve got more than enough murder cases alone to keep me busy.”

The public thinks once an arrest is made in cases like Wissinger’s killing, the story is over, Newman said. But keeping potentially dangerous criminals behind bars is difficult when their cases can’t get to trial, and judges are reluctant to keep presumed-innocent defendants locked up indefinitely. If bond is initially denied after an arrest, as it was in McManus’ case, a defendant can ask for bond again after six months. At that hearing, Newman says a judge will usually inquire where the solicitor’s case stands, and warn that if there’s no progress in another six months, bond is liable to be set.

Something similar seems to have happened with McManus (Newman declined to discuss the specifics of McManus’s case.) The accused killer was denied bond after his Aug. 4, 2012, arrest in Wissinger’s killing. But by Dec. 12, 2013, Circuit Judge Ernest Kinard Jr. had set a conditional bail for McManus, according to documents at the Lancaster County Courthouse. That order allowed McManus to be released if “the matter is not disposed of” by Feb. 15, 2014. His filing for bond is dated Feb. 16.

Newman said if a violent crime suspect is released on bond, his office will ask for requirements such as house arrest and some form of monitoring. Solicitors also seek to add an “immediate pickup provision.”

“Right now, if law enforcement sees somebody out (where his bond doesn’t allow him to be), they can’t just pick him up,” Newman said. “They have to make a report back to the circuit judge, and we only have one here a month.”

But with the “immediate pickup provision,” an officer can immediately pick up a suspect and hold him until a hearing is schedule.

McManus’s bond included a pickup provision, along with a requirement for 24-hour-a-day house arrest at his mother’s home, although without electronic monitoring. The conditions also prohibited McManus from possessing a firearm.

The delay in getting many cases to court is caused by funding and staffing, Newman said.

“Each circuit gets per capita funding from the state, based on population, and the 6th has the lowest population in the state, so we get very little,” he said.

Local funding from the county governments hasn’t helped alleviate the discrepancies. Lancaster County contributes $3.12 per resident for the prosecutor’s office. Fairfield gives $2.76 and Chester only $2.20, versus the $13.58 per capita that York County’s solicitor receives and a statewide average of $8.03. York County has 20 prosecutors available to tackle its caseload, while the 6th has only four.

“Only five counties in the state pay less (to their solicitor’s office) than Chester,” Newman said. In the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years, Chester County contributed $71,543 to the 6th Circuit solicitor’s office.

Sixth Circuit Public Defender Michael Lifsey said his office faces a similar problem. Chester County provides his office $58,000 a year, or $1.75 per resident. York County provides nearly three and a half times as much as that per taxpayer.

“Nobody wants to hear it’s a money problem, but the counties that spend more have better results,” he said.

Lifsey said his office doesn’t compete with Newman’s for funding. Both sides of the courtroom need to be fully funded for the justice system to work, he said. A long delay can put just as much strain on the accused as the wider community, he said.

“We have a lot of defendants in pre-trial detention, which means county taxpayers are paying to house and feed them, to take care of their medical problems,” he said. “Delays harm the victims, but they also harm the defendants because their lives are really on hold. It affects their ability to get a job, it affects their families, and it can linger for years.”

Newman hopes to bring down the backlog by shifting priorities. While previous solicitors have preferred to handle murder cases personally, Newman has told his three deputies to handle cases in their respective counties.

He also hopes to hire an additional prosecutor. And while violent crimes that pose a threat to the public will continue to be a priority, some outstanding cases might simply be dropped, such as drug cases where solicitors have to wait months for the samples to be processed by SLED. The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office will start its drug lab this year, which Newman hopes will at least “slow the growth.”

“Some cases are so old, we we won’t be able to find witnesses anymore. Those may warrant dismissal,” he said. “We’ll handle that on a case-by-case basis.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement will continue to search for McManus. But even if the fugitive is caught, it’s hard to say when his trial for Robinson’s killing will begin.

This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Lancaster case shows dangers of court backlog."