There’s an entire floor in the Mecklenburg County Courthouse that nobody uses. It’s the seventh floor — a full-sized space, built out in 2007 for future courtrooms.
Today, it’s still just filled with old furniture and stacks of paper.
After I wrote about Iryna’s Law yesterday, a former court official emailed me with a blunt point: Even if we add ADAs in Charlotte, do we have enough judges to try the cases?
The judge gap
In 2006, Mecklenburg County had about 800,000 residents. At that time there were seven Superior Court judges assigned to Charlotte.
Today, Mecklenburg is home to more than 1.2 million people — a 50% increase. Yet we’ve added just one Superior Court judge to the mix. That’s it.
In the same period, the number of assistant district attorneys has nearly doubled — from around 45 to 85. That kind of growth mismatch leads to a real bottleneck.
ADAs can review files, conduct discovery, and prep witnesses all day long. But if there’s no available courtroom to try the case — if no judg…