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KIRKSVILLE, MO. -- Why do some court cases take a long time to move through the system? That was the topic of Wednesday’s ‘Facebook Story of the Day’.

There are different factors that can delay a case. The evidence may play a role, both the defense team and prosecuting team need to sift through evidence to make sure they are adequately ready for the case.

In some cases, the defendant may need to go through mental tests to see if he/she was competent at the time the crime was committed, or competent to stand trial. Waiting for those results to come back could take a while.

Also, scheduling may be an issue when it comes to everyone involved in the case.

“In Adair County, Judge Russell Steele is our primary judge for felonies and they are the cases that primarily get tried to jury’s,” said Adair County Prosecutor Matt Wilson. “We generally have about nine days a month at best that we are available to do jury trials, and you have to factor in our schedule, the defense attorney’s schedule and other judges that are visiting and their court schedules.”

The judges in Adair County are required by the Supreme Court to do transfers in St. Charles, Mo.

“When that happens, that takes them out of our county for periods of times,” said Wilson. “So really when you put that in, we’re looking at about maybe 4-5 days a month that realistically cases can be tried, so that slows down the progress as well.”

Civil cases also tend to take longer than criminal cases.

“In criminal cases, victims have a constitutional right in Missouri to a speedy trial just like defendants do,” said Wilson. “Some delays may take place because defense attorney’s are tracking down new witnesses, or are doing depositions and sifting through evidence. It’s been my experience that civil cases tend to take a lot longer to get to trial than criminal cases.”

When are cases tried locally and when are they tried on a federal level?

“There are some cases we just can't file here that are serious, but the federal system, those charges are much more serious. Obviously it’s more beneficial to the general public to have the criminals pursued on a harsher sentence than in state court,” said Wilson. “There are also agreements and understandings in the federal system that on certain types of cases, if state charges are pending or being pursued, federal charges can not be filed or pursued.”

In a case where a defendant is incarcerated, the defense team along with the judges and the prosecuting attorney make it a priority to get that case to court.

“We have an individual whose liberty is being held right now, and they have the right to a speedy trial, so those usually take about 5-6 months before their case goes in front of a jury,” said Wilson.

When individuals are out on bond, those cases can get bumped if there are other people in custody and their case needs to go to court.

“We stack 3 to 5 cases in one or two days so if one case goes away, we can try the next case,” said Wilson. “If someone is out of custody, it can take, really for a trial, close to a year just because we are really bogged down with trial dates right now.”