Saddled with thousands of felony cases that have lingered on dockets for more than a year, district court judges [in Bexar County] are days away from forcing each one through the system in a matter of weeks. It's the first phase of an unprecedented overhaul of how cases here are managed, Criminal District Court Administrator Melissa Barlow Fischer said.

Details.

[How do you move your old cases?]

"Obviously, if everyone wants a trial, then there's no way to get rid of (the cases)," Angelini said.

It is amazing that defense attorneys don't gang up to demand trials even on cases destined to be lost at trial, just because they can. I just hope the 600+ defendants who have been incarcerated for more than 8 months before trial do not succeed in claiming they were denied a speedy trial.

In my experience, threatening "hard" deadlines for settlement has minimal impact when you do not have the capacity to really change anything. But, this is a noble experiment and something certainly needs to be done. As someone pointed out, it may be more important than beautifying a park.

Did you see the story about the judge in Florida who gathers lenders and mortgagors together in her courtroom for en masse negotiations rather than "regular" court proceedings, just because there are way more loans in default than courts available to process foreclosure suits?