As the new year rings in, court officials at the 22nd Judicial Court serving Washington and St. Tammany parishes have a late holiday gift: court hearings and trial times that may be three percent faster and more efficient than before.

Although long considered, but just recently implemented, court officials on Monday said a “major reshuffling” of judges, prosecutors and clerks is underway.

In essence there will be more judges and more time to devote to felony cases that typically in years past was allocated to 10 weeks worth of jury trials. Now there will be 12 weeks of felony trials scheduled, and one assistant district attorney per court division, instead of one prosecutor juggling two divisions in years past. The condensed process, long talked about, was implemented after Sen. Julie Quinn, R-Metarie, passed a bill last year to create two new judgeships, Divisions K and L, to deal strictly with family and juvenile court matters.

With that, “it seemed like a good time to” follow through on the long anticipated “reshuffling” of court matters, said Adrienne Stroble, court administrator for the 22nd Judicial Court.

In what could be the biggest change, two judges and the prosecutors assigned to their divisions by the District Attorney’s office, have found themselves on a three-year rotation between Washington and St. Tammany parish courts.

For example, state judges Raymond Childress and William Burress will handle all felony dockets in Washington Parish, with the exception of capital cases that will be presided over by the original judge. The other eight felony judges, except for the two new family judges, will focus on St. Tammany matters. And while each of the eight judges that remain in St. Tammany will have larger dockets, its still less than when all judges juggled Washington Parish cases, Stroble said.

In that courthouse, located in Franklinton, many judges may have several dockets scheduled there at the same time. But the courthouse, with two courtrooms is six times smaller than St. Tammany’s, leaving some judges to hold court in the local library, local city or parish council chambers and even the judges’ offices, “which is not ideal,” Stroble said.

“It was a loss of decorum,” she said, when criminals show up to court in a library instead of a state-of-the-art courtroom.

That courthouse also had one clerk per four judges and managed a three-person job for each judge, including both civil and criminal court case matters, Stroble said.

Now, clerks such as minute clerks, who file evidence and court rulings, and docket clerks who handle paperwork within the clerk’s office, will be assigned to each judge in Washington Parish, another move that may speed up filings and thus cases.

“It’s been a real struggle for many years in Washington Parish,” Stroble said.

The addition of family court judges, Mary Clemence Devereux in Division K and Dawn Amacker in Division L, helps too.

Childress, who has presided over armed robbery, rapes and murder trials as well as divorce proceedings, has said the current one-day-a-month schedule dedicated to family law cases often leads to cases being continued six weeks or longer.

On average, 22nd Judicial Court judges spend 25 days a year hearing family court cases, he said. Now those same judges take those 25 days, or five weeks, and devote the time to criminal and civil trials, in itself a roughly 50 percent increase in the amount of trials a judge presides over yearly, not considering the two new weeks of trials.

“We think we have it right,” Stroble said. “Only time will tell.”