Grant County Prosecutor's office dismisses 149 old cases

EPHRATA — The Grant County Prosecutor’s Office found 149 possible cases where the statute of limitations ran out while the police reports sat in filing cabinets.

The possible charges exceeding the statue of limitations range from an arson case in 1999 to a burglary case in 2006. This leaves the county unable to prosecute the 149 potential charges, including cases of child molestation, rape of a child, vehicular assaults, forgeries, identity thefts and felony assaults.

The files were found after the prosecutor’s office finished an internal audit of the entire felony division. The audit started in early March and Grant County Prosecutor Angus Lee is in the process of sending the results to the police chiefs throughout the county.

Lee said he started the audit because he wanted to know the status of the cases in the office.

“When you take over an office, it’s important to know what you have in the system and what the status is. We started to find referrals that looked a little old,” he said.

The referrals are police reports sent to the office to determine what charges should be filed. He said the prosecutor’s office has an obligation to process the cases quickly. If it doesn’t, it can create a burden to the victim, law enforcement and the people who were referred for charging.

“If law enforcement prepares a case and it doesn’t get handled quickly, then it creates an administrative burden because they have to hold all of the evidence … Then the victim goes without that property. It’s imperative the prosecutor’s office be timely … If you’re the victim of the crime it’s important the prosecutor’s office notifies you one way or the other so (the victim) can ask why,” Lee said.

One of the reasons the audit started was because a detective contacted him shortly after he took office in January to say their evidence locker was overcrowded, Lee said.

The majority of the cases found in the audit were sent to the office before Lee became prosecutor in January, and were handled by former Deputy Prosecutors Carolyn Fair and Steve Scott, according to the prosecutor’s office.

While many of the cases listed are past the statute of limitations, Lee said they are reviewing the rest to decide whether to press charges.

“We’re working hard right now to get the cases that are coming up against the limit and reviewing them to determine whether or not they can be charged,” he told the Grant County commissioners on Monday. “It’s difficult because when a case has sat for two years, memories fade and evidence gets stale. So that’s a challenge, we’re going to have to determine what the appropriate venue for charging them is.”

Lee said once the prosecutor’s office sets up their new case management software, it should alleviate the problem.

“One of reasons we’re putting in our new case management system is that when a case comes in, we are constantly made aware of what the status of the case is and … We’ll get constant reminders from the system.”

Lee said he wasn’t sure why the cases weren’t reviewed.

“We’re not looking backwards. We’re looking forwards,” he said.