Pearce Worked to Secure Additional Judges for Southern New Mexico District
Washington,
Oct 5, 2004 -
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 878, the Bankruptcy Judgeship Act, in which Congressman Steve Pearce was successful in securing additional federal judges, two permanent and one temporary, for the New Mexico District.
“The desperately needed judges provided for in this legislation will decrease the weighted filings by half, bringing Las Cruces on parity with those in the rest of the country. I will continue to work to provide our courts with the resources they need to get their job done,” Pearce said.
According to the Judicial Conference, data indicates the New Mexico District has the fourth highest total criminal caseload per judgeship in the nation with 739 weighted cases per judgeship. This is 46 percent higher than the national average and a 150 percent increase from 1996.
This extraordinary caseload is primarily attributed to the geographical factors unique to the District. Immigration and narcotics cases are almost exclusively driving the increase—placing an extraordinary burden on the Las Cruces federal courthouse, which is just 50 miles away from the U.S.–Mexico border.
The District has begun to exhaust all judicial resources. One option to handle the enormous caseload in Las Cruces is assigning rotating duties to District Judges from Albuquerque and Santa Fe—requiring judges and their staffs to travel more than 450 miles round trip during the week.
Many judges have even been called in from other jurisdictions. For example, U.S. District Judges from Vermont and Kansas have presided in Las Cruces regularly and conclude that they have never seen a caseload as high in the entire time they have been on the bench.
