E-Mail This Article to a Friend HOMICIDES Not-so-special session BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

Two months ago, Suffolk Superior Court began a special homicide session intended to plow through a backlog of cases awaiting trial (see "Courting Trouble," News and Features, October 1). So far, the court hasn’t exactly been shuttling busloads of convicted killers to state prison. In fact, of the 17 defendants who were scheduled to stand trial by Thanksgiving for Boston murders, just one has been convicted at the time of this writing, and one other pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter.

Five of the other 15 are currently on trial, including one whose jury was deliberating at press time. One defendant has been acquitted; charges have been dropped against another; and two others will have to be retried following litigation that resulted in hung juries. The trials of the remaining six have been delayed or rescheduled.

The one conviction was Lord Hampton, for the 1999 murder of 14-year-old Chauntae Jones. This represents only a partial success in the case for District Attorney Dan Conley, because Jones’s boyfriend, Kyle Bryant, was acquitted earlier this year. And just before trial, Conley’s office worked out a deal with Shonn Bailey, accused of fatally stabbing a Dorchester man in early 2001. In return for pleading guilty to manslaughter, Bailey will serve only 11 years in prison — which includes nearly four years of time served awaiting trial — instead of a potential life sentence.

In October, a jury deadlocked in the trial of two young men accused of killing a 16-year-old on an MBTA platform in 2001. And this month, in another headline-grabbing case, a jury acquitted James Bush of shooting three-year-old Malik Andrade Percival during an attempted home invasion.

Meanwhile, Conley’s office quietly abandoned the prosecution of Alexander Droz, after holding him for nearly three years awaiting trial. According to Droz’s attorney, Stephen Weymouth, prosecutor Tim Bradl first asked to postpone the trial so the police could run tests on potential evidence — evidence they’ve had in hand since January of 2002. The judge insisted on starting the trial, and Bradl dropped the charge.

Bradl went forward on Droz’s co-defendant, Timothy Deal, whose jury was deliberating as the Phoenix went to press on Monday. The trial of David and Paul Pepicelli for a 1999 murder in the North End — which the brothers claim was in self-defense — was expected to continue into next week. And a trial expected to last two weeks had just started against Joseph Cousin and Marquis Nelson, charged with killing 10-year-old Trina Persad in 2002.

As the special session continues, it’s not just the lack of guilty verdicts that is disturbing — it’s the apparent inability of the court to speed up the machinery of justice. The homicide session was supposed to burst the logjam of more than 200 murder defendants awaiting trial in Suffolk County, and move the county toward a murder-case time-frame goal of 12 months from arrest to adjudication. But so far more cases have been postponed than adjudicated during the special session, which undoubtedly means delays for other murder defendants, starting with seven originally scheduled for trial between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

One problem has been the absence of guilty pleas. Defendants often decide to plead guilty to lesser offenses as their trials approach, but that has proven surprisingly uncommon here: Bailey’s is the only guilty plea entered so far in the cases scheduled for this special session. One other defendant, not yet scheduled for trial, pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month.

Meanwhile, seven homicides have occurred in the city since the start of the special homicide session. The odds of those killers getting convicted quickly do not seem much improved.