Fort Smith Times Record It could take a year for Sebastian County's criminal justice system to fully recover from the backlog of jury trials postponed during COVID-19. With the exception of six weeks in October and November, the Arkansas Supreme Court has barred jury trials from proceeding since March 16, 2020. In Sebastian County, the restrictions resulted in 845 unresolved cases in the Fort Smith and Greenwood districts of circuit court due to defendants not settling or waiting for trials to resume May 3. The last time the courts have had this much of a backlog is 2017, when they saw a surge of roughly 2,400 total cases — a load that took the prosecutor's office about 12 months to overcome.