It’s no secret that the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Washington’s highest local court, has a backlog problem. Chief Judge Eric Washington acknowledged it when he came up for reappointment last year, saying he had only “modest success” fulfilling a pledge to reduce the court’s inventory of undecided cases.
In 2009 alone, the judges ruled on more than a dozen cases that had been argued at least two years earlier. At least three of those cases had been sitting for more than three years since argument.
