in south East Washington DC well um

the pandemic caused a lot of delays in the court system

uh but because of the fact that we don't have um

enough judges sitting in our court

um Mr K's trial uh

has been pushed out to January 13th, 2025

so his family will not see justice uh

will not have any finality in their lives until 2025

has been very hurtful um

to me as a lawyer to represent um

families um who

who have to endure this type of delay

it's also very hurtful to um

my business my practice

when I have to finance cases

and keep these cases alive

and keep witnesses active

witnesses move all over the place

that the people's lives change over time

so when you go from an average of a 2 year

wait for a trial to a 5 year wait

uh nearly a 5 year wait for Dion case family um

it has extraordinary um

consequences and burden um

on me as a lawyer and certainly uh

on the family

and it makes clients lose faith in the system

I've had clients whose cases have been rescheduled

multiple times I mean

four and five times and they're asking me hey

what's going on Miss Warden

and they're losing faith in the system

so I have to explain to them hey

we're missing 13 judges um

in our court it's not

it's not you know

the system it's a failure of the us uh

senate judiciary committee to confirm our judges

uh we are not a state

and so other states can pick their judges

and they go right to the bench

but DC is not so we have they federal process

it's a quasi federal process

even though these are state court judges

who deal with state issues

like landlord and tenants

small claims those things that that

you know federal judges don't do

our judges do that however

because we are not state uh

we have this kind of

federal intervention in our process

and it has slowed justice down in our town