Cape Giradeau County prosecutor's office nears record caseload

The Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney's office will file about 2,500 criminal cases by the end of 2015. Prosecutor Chris Limbaugh said the office was at about 2,450 by Wednesday, but assistant prosecutors are scrambling to file cases before the end of the year.

The final total of cases will be the most or second-most the office has filed in a single year.

While the total is between 200 and 300 cases a year higher than the office averages, Limbaugh said the number of criminal cases in Cape Girardeau County has increased steadily over the past 20 years.

"At any given time, a prosecutor may have 300 cases," Limbaugh said. "It's made us much more busy, even in the past three years."

Limbaugh said he believes the increase in crime numbers mirrors the increase in population in Cape Girardeau County. Cape Girardeau, in particular, has become a hub for Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois, which attracts visitors that include criminals.

Limbaugh said many of Cape Girardeau's violent crimes this year were committed by nonresidents.

The prosecutor's office hired a new assistant prosecutor this past year, using funding approved by the Cape Girardeau County Commission.

Limbaugh said this was the first expansion of the criminal prosecution office since 1998.

Limbaugh is happy to have the help, because not all criminal cases carry an equal workload. While misdemeanors and lesser felonies have increased in the county, violent crimes also have increased, creating more work for Limbaugh and assistant prosecutors Angel Woodruff and Julie Hunter.

"The number of homicides, the number of Major Case Squad cases, have increased," Limbaugh said. "You used to be able to say, 'That one robbery case ...' and everybody would know what you were talking about. Now we have about 15."

If the number of cases were to increase much more, the prosecuting attorney's office would begin to run out of space. Limbaugh said it was difficult enough to find space for a new assistant prosecutor in the Jackson Circuit courthouse this past year.

Although prosecutors are scanning case files digitally, the volume of physical files -- required by law -- is immense.

"One of the vaults is stacked from floor to ceiling with old files," Limbaugh said.

When Cape Girardeau County voters approved a use tax on sales of out-of-state purchases, the language on the ballot called for a new courthouse. The county has been collecting the use tax since July, averaging $67,000 per month. The county has received a tentative plan from Treanor Architects in 2013 for a new courthouse that would keep the old courthouse and add a four-story concrete building connected to the western portion of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department, crossing over Washington Street.

The cost estimate for that plan was $20 million. The plan also includes a new parking garage.

County Commissioner Charlie Herbst said a more developed plan likely would not be considered until September or October, when the annual use-tax revenue is known definitively. Then the county would pursue a request for quotation for an architect.

Herbst realizes there are space restrictions in the old courthouse, especially because civil cases are conducted in Cape Girardeau.

"He's got his office manager working at a desk in the hallway," Herbst said of Limbaugh. "She works there so employees have good space to work. People walk by her space 100 times a day."

The increase in cases is putting a strain on Cape Girardeau County Jail. Sheriff John Jordan said the jail has had the highest average daily population ever in 2015: about 225 inmates per day -- higher than the jail's official capacity of 220 inmates.

"The high population in the jail puts a lot of stress on the staff and the inmates as well," he said.

Herbst said the circuit-court system in Cape Girardeau County works efficiently, but having a larger courthouse with more space might allow more cases to be processed at once.

Currently, if a civil trial and a criminal trial occur in the same week, nothing else can get done. Herbst said he believes processing more cases would alleviate the high jail population.

bkleine@semissourian.com

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