Baldwin County’s court system has scrapped an unusual case assignment arrangement that had allowed the District Attorney’s office to play a role in deciding which judge would hear which case, following months of quiet concern from defense attorneys about the potential for favoritism.
For more than a year, Baldwin County’s 28th Judicial Circuit allowed District Attorney Hallie Dixon’s office to help direct cases to specific judges as part of a “vertical prosecution” model, in which a single prosecutor is assigned to a case from start to finish. Dixon has said the change was intended to move cases through the system more efficiently and ease the workload on her staff.
The arrangement was reversed last month and handed back to the Circuit Clerk’s office, which now handles the random assignment of cases the way most other Alabama counties operate. Circuit Clerk Jody Campbell said the change had nothing to do with reluctance to take the responsibility back, but noted that when someone offers to help with a job that had been shorthanded, it was hard to turn down at the time.
The shift became public through a court order in a case involving reckless manslaughter and negligent homicide charges, after a defense attorney filed a motion seeking to stop the DA’s office from what he described as “judge shopping,” the widely condemned practice of steering cases toward judges seen as more favorable to one side. The presiding judge over Baldwin County’s circuit, who has served on the bench since the late 1990s after years as a county prosecutor, said he had heard informal concerns raised by defense attorneys but was never presented with concrete evidence that the system was being abused.
He noted that Baldwin County’s judges tend to rule similarly across the board, making it especially difficult to prove any case was being funneled toward a specific courtroom for strategic reasons. Even so, he acknowledged that judges rely on being able to notice red flags themselves, such as an unusual pattern of similar cases landing with the same judge, as a kind of informal safeguard against abuse.
The defense attorney who raised the initial concerns said he never had proof that anything improper had occurred, but felt the system “didn’t pass the smell test” regardless. He said he was relieved to see the process return to the Circuit Clerk’s office and expects it to stay that way going forward.
The episode highlights the kind of behind-the-scenes procedural questions that can shape how criminal cases move through a county’s court system, even when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. For now, Baldwin County’s case assignments are back in the hands of the Circuit Clerk, mirroring how the process works in most jurisdictions across the state.