WASHINGTON - U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Guerin Zipps faced a friendly Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday as the lawmakers considered her nomination to fill the seat of U.S. District Judge John Roll, slain in the Jan. 8 attack that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Roll's seat is one of three vacant federal judgeships in Arizona, and experts say the court will need even more judges after those vacancies are filled to address a backlog of cases in the district.
"We desperately need more full-time judges to keep things rolling," said Walter Nash, a Tucson trial lawyer who has practiced law in Arizona for 40 years.
When he works outside of the district, other judges are "stunned" to hear how many cases Arizona courts are trying to work through, Nash said.
The average Arizona federal judge handled 854 "actions" in 2010, compared with a national average of 566, according to the 2010 report by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. It said filings in Arizona rose 7.8 percent from 2009 to 2010, while the national increase was 2.9 percent during the same period.
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Nash attributed the Arizona surge to massive numbers of immigration and drug cases in the district.
Giffords' office wrote to President Obama in March and urged him to fill the vacancies, pointing out that Arizona ranked first in criminal case filings among courts in the 9th Circuit in 2009 and third in the nation. In 2010, felony filings in Arizona federal courts rose 21 percent, her office said.
"I wish that every member of this committee could attend her (Zipps') court every workday where there is a minimum of 70 defendants, all addressed at one time," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said at Wednesday's hearing.
"It is a very unusual kind of judicial situation, and she handles it with skill and efficiency and fairness," he said.
McCain joined Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., at the hearing to support Zipps' nomination. McCain said he would be "very appreciative of an expeditious and rapid confirmation of Judge Zipps because of the judicial emergency that exists."
At the time of his death, Roll was preparing to declare a judicial emergency to give judges more time to process the heavy workload in the district. That emergency was subsequently declared by the new chief judge in the district.
The 1,100 cases Roll was handling at the time were divided among the other already-overburdened judges in the district, Giffords' office said.
"It is a very unusual kind of judicial situation, and she handles it with skill and efficiency and fairness."
Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz.,
on judge's mass-defendant hearings
