Opinion ID: 3009690
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the allegheny county docketing system

Text: When we searched for some reasonable explanation for the Court's failure to act on Story's PCHA petition for such a lengthy period of time, we concluded that the monumental delay was, in large part, the result of serious deficiencies in the Court's docketing system. For some reason, the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County maintains no running (contemporaneous) central docket sheets for work in process on any criminal case before it. Before 1978, court personnel apparently recorded all filings and orders from all cases in a series of ledgers. The ledger entries appeared in chronological order of their happening. However, on any given day, the ledgers might have reflected several unrelated occurrences in several unrelated cases. Thus, it was nearly impossible for someone, including the court, to array in one place the proceedings of any particular case without expending considerable effort rummaging through each page of the ledgers. Although the court computerized the ledger system in 1978, computerization did not remedy the problem; the court still does not create a running central docket sheet for each criminal case until the case is appealed to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, and so there is no convenient source which reflects the filings that have occurred in a particular case. 10 As a result of this system, there was never a public record created to summarize the events in Story's collateral proceeding. Nor was there a convenient method by which the presiding judge could monitor the progress of Story's case, independent of the judge's own recordkeeping. There was simply no way of knowing the status of a case without scanning the computer files by entering the defendant's name, state offense tracking number (OTN), or the information (docket) number. The cumbersome nature of these methods apparently caused the court to overlook Story's pending proceeding. We are surprised that a court with such a distinguished history as the Court of Common Pleas for Allegheny County lacks a central docket sheet system capable of monitoring work in progress on each criminal case. We believe that the absence of such a system contributed to the terrible delay of nearly nine years that we observe here.0 We urge the Court of Common Pleas to upgrade its docketing system. The order of the district court dismissing Story's federal habeas petition will be reversed and the case remanded to the district court for consideration of the petition on the merits.0 0 It also created a good deal of confusion in the proceedings before this Court because neither party could state with any certainty whether the Court of Common Pleas ever appointed attorney Entenman to represent Story. 0 . We do not engage the dissent's discussion of the merits, and intimate no view as to its correctness vel non except to note that we do not believe the dissent's analysis and conclusion to be free from doubt. At all events, we believe it preferable for the merits to be addressed by the district court in the first instance. 11 12 1 Story v. Kindt, No. 92-3586