It’s been nearly three months since Jaylon Hobson and Brittney Jackson were charged in connection with the death of Jackson’s 4-year-old daughter.

Police found Sequoia Samuels dead following a day-long manhunt on June 15. Police allege that Hobson and Jackson falsely reported Sequoia missing from their North Memphis residence, and charged both of them the following day.

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But Hobson, who so far has only been charged with filing a false offense report, has yet to have his case voted on by a grand jury.

“In the scheme of things, it hasn’t been that long,” said Craig Morton, Hobson’s lawyer, who said that on average indictments take 60 to 90 days. It has been 81 days since Hobson was charged.

But Jackson — currently charged with aggravated child neglect, abuse of a corpse and filing a false offense report — could be indicted much later. She was only recently declared competent to stand for trial on Aug. 21 after undergoing a mental evaluation, the results of which took several weeks to be returned. Jackson’s preliminary hearing, the final step before a case is sent to a grand jury for a vote, is set to be held on Oct. 5.

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Morton believes that Hobson will be indicted soon, sometime in the next few weeks. Kenneth Brashier, Jackson’s lawyer, expects her to be indicted sometime before Christmas.

Both Morton and Brashier expect homicide charges to be added to their clients’ cases.

Most agree that cases are taking too long to be disposed of in Shelby County. Cited reasons vary, from trial backlogs and overwhelming caseloads to delays on the part of the elected judges and, as is the case for Jackson and Hobson, delays at the grand jury level.

‘Nolle prosequi’

The most recent data from the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts shows that in fiscal year 2022, 55.2% of criminal case counts in Shelby County were either dismissed or the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office decided not to pursue charges, known by the Latin legal term “nolle prosequi.” 

The AOC’s report tracks dispositions by counts, not case, which is an important distinction because a case could have multiple counts. For instance, a defendant could have multiple charges related to one alleged criminal act and could even plead guilty to some charges while going to trial on others.

The available data covers the period from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, meaning it precedes the tenure of current Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy. Mulroy took office Sept. 1, 2022.

The fiscal year 2023 data, which would cover the majority of Mulroy’s first year as DA, won’t be available until February 2024. The AOC has a December reporting deadline for the court clerk’s offices across the state to submit their data, and then it takes several months for AOC to produce its annual report. 

The second-largest disposition category, at 21.5%, was a guilty plea to the counts with which the defendants were initially charged.

The third-largest category is “other” at 9.6%. It’s unclear what this category represents. The AOC did not respond to repeated requests for additional information about the data, including the meaning of this category. 

Following that, it was guilty pleas again, but this time guilty pleas to a lesser offense than the original charges, at 6.2%.

Pre-trial or judicial diversion was 4.3%. 

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Pre-trial diversion in Tennessee is a process through which a defendant enters into a memorandum of understanding with prosecutors before being sentenced to suspend prosecution of their case for a certain period of time. The suspension comes in exchange for meeting certain conditions like not committing another offense or entering a rehab program, like ones offered by one of Shelby County’s three specialty courts. If they meet the conditions during the suspension period, they are eligible to have their record expunged after it ends. 

Judicial diversion is similar, but a defendant first pleads guilty or nolo contendere, similar to a guilty plea but meaning that they did not admit guilt. 

Only 1.2% of counts were disposed of by trial; 1% were guilty verdicts and 0.2% were acquittals; most defendants who went to trial were found guilty. It’s unclear if the data only includes jury trials or if it includes bench trials as well. This question was part of the list The Daily Memphian sent to AOC.

The smallest category was counts that were transferred to another court or were remanded, which made up 0.3%.

‘We need to work on speeding that up’

According to the DA’s office, it takes around 57 days for a case to go through Shelby County General Sessions Criminal Court, which is where the first proceedings of a criminal case occur. Those cases are then sent to a division of Shelby County Criminal Court. It’s unclear how long it takes for a case to work its way through the overall Criminal Court system or how long it takes for each case to be disposed of overall, from arrest to the final court proceeding. 

Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy knows it’s taking too long to dispose of cases.

“We need to work on speeding that up. And that is one of the things my office is looking at,” he said in a recent interview.

Mulroy laid responsibility for long disposition times on local defense attorneys, some judges and his office. 

He said defense attorneys request the “vast majority” of resets, often because they need more time to review the discovery for trial prep or they are conducting their own investigation into the case. Other times, it’s simply high case volume.

“Once again, I mean there are so many cases coming through 201 Poplar. Defense attorneys' own dockets are crowded, public defenders’ certainly are and they just didn’t have time to get to this case and they needed a little more time,” he said. 

The Daily Memphian reported in June that public defenders’ offices nationally are seeing at least three times as many cases as they should. That high workload has extended to the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office and caused some attorneys to leave for private practice. 

Mulroy also recognized that because of the heavy volume of cases that his office sees annually, there has been a delay in getting a number of them to a grand jury for a decision on indictment. 

Grand jury delays

Concerns about grand jury delays aren’t new and some say that they could be causing overall longer disposition times and more frequent plea deals.

Shelby County Criminal Court Division 7 Judge Lee Coffee recently told The Daily Memphian that on average, criminal cases in Shelby County take around six months to a year to reach a grand jury. That length of time is much longer than when he was a prosecutor in Houston, he said. 

Coffee worked for eight years as an assistant district attorney in Texas after obtaining his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1981. He said that back then, attorneys had three months to get cases to a grand jury before a defendant’s constitutional rights were considered violated, per Texas state law at the time.

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Phyllis Aluko, chief public defender for the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office, told Shelby County Commissioners on July 27 that there are some jurisdictions that require cases to be submitted even faster: within two weeks of arrest for a vote. If they aren’t, the defendant has to be released from custody while the case proceeds. 

Aluko also suggested that extended waiting times for cases to hit local grand juries are causing defendants to take plea deals more often. Many would rather take a plea deal than wait in jail only to have to wait even longer for a trial date after they are indicted.

“It is, in my opinion, a travesty but it works to increase the number of cases handled by plea,” Aluko said.

Nonprofit report gives something to reach for 

A 2011 report from The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), a nonprofit started in 1971 that focuses on issues related to state courts, says that most felony cases, 98%, should be resolved within a year. 

It also says that felony arraignments in general jurisdiction courts, which would be criminal court in Shelby County, should be done within 60 days. Suspects aren’t arraigned in criminal court, however, until an indictment is returned. 

The report says that most misdemeanor cases, also 98%, should be resolved within 180 days. 

Communication has become quicker and more convenient in the 21st century but that hasn’t translated in the nation’s court processes, according to the report.

“While many courts now make information available online and are gradually incorporating electronic transactions for filings, service and payments, the case disposition process remains virtually the same as it has been since the introduction of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938,” the report reads. “Surveys of public opinion concerning the courts consistently find the chief complaint to be the slowness of case resolution.”

The Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), a group of state court administrators from across the country that, similar to the NCSC, focuses on issues related to state courts, and the American Bar Association (ABA) previously released their own time standards, which the NCSC studied, leading to its own standards outlined in the 2011 report. 

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COSCA’s said that 100% of felony cases should be resolved in 180 days; the ABA said that the same percentage of cases should be resolved in a year.

“Empirical evidence from urban trial courts thus demonstrates two things: First, a time standard of 365 days, while still difficult to attain for almost all courts, is far more realistic than a time standard of 180 days. Second, a standard of 98% of all felonies is more realistic than one of 100%,” the report reads.

Ideas differ on how to speed up disposition times

Implementing time standards could help define what a case backlog means for a court, as a case in backlog would simply be one that is older than the standard, according to the report. Time standards can also serve to direct focus on those cases and make sure the right steps are taken to get them disposed.

Aluko, Coffee and Mulroy expressed different ideas to address cases in backlog, specifically ones that are stuck at the grand jury level. 

When speaking to county commissioners July 27, Aluko advocated for a similar law to the one she discussed to be implemented in Tennessee that would allow defendants to be released if they weren’t indicted within two weeks of being brought into custody.

Shelby County currently has two grand juries: one that meets on Tuesdays and one that meets on Thursdays. Coffee proposed adding a third local grand jury to hear more cases.

Previously there was a third group, but its work ended around the time the pandemic hit, according to Clyde Carson, foreman for the Tuesday grand jury.

Carson, who has been the Tuesday foreman since 2018, said that when there was a third jury, the work was spread so thin between them. 

Carson is appointed by the criminal court judges to instruct grand jurors in their proceedings and is paid by the county for his work. His position is distinct from a regular jury foreman, which is a juror selected to serve as head juror during a jury trial.

“The Wednesday grand jury was disassembled because we just weren’t hearing but 40 cases a day — 120 a week — between the three of us,” he said. “So why have the Wednesday grand jury when two grand juries can hear 60 a piece?”

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Mulroy plans to reintroduce the “60-day list” at his office this month.

The list is a collection of cases that have been waiting 60 days or longer to be handed to a grand jury for an indictment decision.

Mulroy said that all of his office’s team leaders will get a copy of the list to see which attorneys have the most delayed cases. Team leaders will then hold regular meetings with those prosecutors to discuss the delays.

“In some cases, there’ll be a legitimate explanation,” he said. “Maybe there’s a plea deal in the works, maybe they’re waiting on lab results to come back. But if there isn’t, then we need to get that done.”

Julia Baker contributed to this report.