ESCANABA – Delta County District Court is currently short a magistrate following a resignation.

At the end of May, Magistrate Jeana LaCarte turned in her resignation after 20 years of working in the courthouse.

“She’s been working in the courthouse for 20 years and just feeling like she needed a change in direction, and she’s young enough to do it,” explained 94th District Court Judge Steve Parks.

With LaCarte’s resignation, the district court is working to hire a replacement.

Currently, the court has one magistrate – Samantha Henderson, and two weekend magistrates.

“They are sworn magistrates, but their duties are limited only to after-hours on-call work,” Parks said.

The request for weekend magistrates went before the Delta County Board of Commissioners in October and was subsequently approved.

“This was worked out with the county so that when somebody gets arrested and, say, on a Friday night, they’re not going to sit there until Monday before anybody looks at their case. So that’s why they’re on call,” Parks said.

The court has conducted four interviews with individuals that Parks referred to as ‘quality people.’

Parks said a decision nor an offer has been made as of last week, but he has an idea of the individual.

“We have somebody we’re honeying on,” he said.

He couldn’t provide an exact timetable of when a hire will be made, but he and others are actively working to fill the position.

“The best I could tell you is as soon as possible, and we’re working on that. We’re working on that.”

Parks spoke about LaCarte not only as a magistrate but her service in the drug court as the case manager.

“She was hired as a pure magistrate. When I say that, that means she does arraignments. She processes complaints, processes search warrants. She handles informal hearings.

She attended litigation conferences. She brings in people who haven’t paid their fines and costs. All those things are judicial functions that are for the magistrate to do.

And she – God bless her at the time when we’re trying to form the drug court, she said, “Well, why can’t I do it?” So, she took that on, and that was huge,” Parks explained.

At the most recent drug court graduation, Parks announced that 48 individuals had graduated, and the program currently has a 17 percent recidivism rate.

“So, that means that 83 percent of these high-risk, high-need people have not been arrested for drug or alcohol offenses, which is something we’re very, very proud of. And (we have) better statistics in Delta County than a lot of places throughout the state,” Parks said during the drug court graduation in April.

Parks hopes the public is grateful to LaCarte and her 20 years of service.

“I think it’s fair to say that many of our drug court graduates if they were to point to one person who helped them through the process and helped them get to where they are in terms of maintaining their sobriety, she would probably be the person that they would point to,” he said.

He said LaCarte was kind and supportive of those in the program, but she was also firm and didn’t put up with any ‘guff.’

Parks added while he is sad to see LaCarte go, he enjoyed his time working with her.

“I had the pleasure and privilege of working with her both in the prosecutor’s office for almost 10 years and here for another 10 years. So we worked together for close to 20 years. She’s a highly dedicated, loyal, hard-working employee, and you know, she’ll definitely be missed,” he said.