Three In-Custody Arraignments, One Sick Court Reporter
Wednesday, 8:40 a.m., Courtroom 3 of a mid-sized county court. You are the criminal division clerk. The 9:00 a.m. calendar has 34 entries: 19 arraignments, 9 pretrial conferences, 4 probation violation hearings, and 2 jury trials set to begin. At 8:45 four things land on you at once. (a) The jail transport officer reports that three arraignment defendants are in custody and, under the local rule printed in the court's calendar manual, an in-custody defendant must be arraigned by 5:00 p.m. on the second court day after the booking date, excluding weekends and court holidays; the hour of booking does not count. Two were booked Monday at 6:10 p.m. and 11:55 p.m.; one was booked Tuesday at 2:00 a.m. (b) The court reporter assigned to Courtroom 3 has called in sick and no substitute is available before 1:00 p.m. (c) Defense counsel for one of the jury trials has filed an emergency motion to continue, stating her expert witness is stranded. (d) The judge's chambers asks you to "just move the custody cases to tomorrow afternoon" so the calendar will fit.
1. State the arraignment deadline for each of the three in-custody defendants and determine whether chambers' proposal to move all three to Thursday afternoon would violate the rule. Show your counting.
Read the worked answer
The rule keys to the booking date, not the hour, and counts only court days.
| Booking | First court day after | Second court day after | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 6:10 p.m. | Tue | Wed | Wed 5:00 p.m. |
| Mon 11:55 p.m. | Tue | Wed | Wed 5:00 p.m. |
| Tue 2:00 a.m. | Wed | Thu | Thu 5:00 p.m. |
A 11:55 p.m. booking is still a Monday booking; do not roll it forward because of the late hour. The Thursday-afternoon plan breaches the rule for the two Monday defendants by roughly a day and leaves the Tuesday defendant with no margin. Before answering, confirm Monday was not a court holiday - a holiday pushes all three deadlines one court day later. Put the computation in writing so the judge can see why the calendar cannot simply be shifted.
2. How do you build today's calendar given the reporter's absence and the emergency motion to continue? Identify what you may decide yourself and what must go to the judge.
Read the worked answer
Separate calendar mechanics (yours) from substantive rulings (the judge's).
- In-custody arraignments stay today. Move them to 1:00 p.m., when the reporter returns; that is still inside the 5:00 p.m. deadlines. Notify jail transport and all counsel in writing with a time stamp so no one claims they were never told.
- Fill the morning with record-free work - pretrial conferences and probation violation hearings where the parties agree - and note on each docket entry that no verbatim record was made, so the absence is documented rather than hidden.
- The continuance is not yours to grant. Route the motion to the trial judge before the jury is sworn, notify opposing counsel, and say nothing to the jury panel until the judge rules. A clerk who announces a continuance creates a mistrial risk.
- Log every change with the time and the reason.
3. Write the substance of your response to chambers (3–5 sentences) and explain why you respond that way.
Read the worked answer
"Judge, the two defendants booked Monday must be arraigned by 5:00 p.m. today under the calendar manual rule; moving them to Thursday afternoon would put the court past that deadline. I can keep all three on today's calendar by starting the in-custody arraignments at 1:00 p.m., when the reporter returns, and using the morning for pretrial conferences. If you want them continued anyway, I need that as a ruling on the record so I can docket the order and the reason. Please confirm by reply so I can notify transport and counsel."
Why: the clerk's duty is to protect the record and the deadlines, not to make the calendar look tidy. Putting the request in writing creates an audit trail, gives the judge the information chambers lacked, and offers a workable alternative before anyone is harmed. If the judge still orders the move, it becomes a docketed judicial act with a stated reason - not a silent clerical reshuffle.