{"id":24876,"date":"2019-02-08T16:46:07","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T22:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=24876"},"modified":"2019-02-08T16:46:07","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T22:46:07","slug":"additional-district-court-judge-requested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=24876","title":{"rendered":"Additional district court judge requested"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill that would increase the number of district court judges in Douglas County was discussed by the Judiciary Committee Feb. 8.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Steve Lathrop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB309, introduced by Omaha Sen. Steve Lathrop, would add one district court judge, increasing the number in Douglas County to 17. Lathrop said the bill is based on a recommendation by the Judicial Resources Commission to ease the judicial workload.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving an adequate number of judges is key to making sure the people in our most populous county have [comparable] access to their courts as the people in less populous parts of the state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

J. Scott Paul, president of the Nebraska Bar Association, spoke in support of the bill. At some point, he said, inadequate judicial resources creates a due process problem for people appearing before the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of fairness to litigants\u2014not to mention the judges who are trying to do their best\u2014we think that [the situation] could be helped in some small part with one more judge,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n

Douglas County District Court Judge J. Russell Derr also supported LB309. Douglas County conducted 67 first- and second-degree murder trials between 2011 and 2018, he said, while Lancaster County conducted only four.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand the budget constraints, but we [need] an additional judge in Douglas County,\u201d Derr said.<\/p>\n

No one testified in opposition to the bill and the committee took no immediate action on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill that would increase the number of district court judges in Douglas County was discussed by the Judiciary Committee Feb. 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-24876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-steve-lathrop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24877,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24876\/revisions\/24877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}