He singled out the high number of robbery cases that collapse in Philadelphia's lower Municipal Court. "That's a huge question there," he said.
In a wide-ranging interview, Castille, a former Republican district attorney in Philadelphia, complained about what he said were "tabloid" headlines of The Inquirer series and also released a four-page memo that questioned some of the paper's statistical findings.
Nonetheless, after studying The Inquirer's reporting and talking with top Philadelphia judges and court administrators, Castille said he would now:
Order Philadelphia's courts to hire outside experts, perhaps from a university or from the National Center for State Courts, a research organization based in Williamsburg, Va., to dig deeper into the paper's statistical findings. Their task would be to "come in and analyze the raw numbers and point out problems."
Appoint a fellow state Supreme Court justice, Seamus P. McCaffery, to work as special liaison with Municipal Court to shake up its operation. McCaffery, a former president judge of Municipal Court, has long been a vigorous critic of the high number of dismissals there.
Push the 25 judges in Municipal Court to streamline how they handle preliminary hearings, in which they decide if enough evidence exists to hold a suspect for a full trial in the higher Common Pleas Court. Critics, including McCaffery, say that the judges have turned these hearings into protracted "mini-trials" – leading to far too many dismissed cases.
Strip the Clerk of Quarter Sessions Office, a key record-keeping arm of the court, of much of its functions. Castille said he found it unacceptable that the clerk's office had kept no computerized records of $1 billion in bail owed by fugitives from court.
