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Courts Getting Harder To Follow
By David Hedges, publisher
The Times Record/Roane County Reporter
Computers are supposed to make our lives better and our jobs
easier.
When it comes to covering the court system to keep readers of
this newspaper informed, computers are making that job a lot
harder.
It's been a double-whammy.
First it was magistrate court,
where a new computer system was installed in December.
When it comes to compiling the weekly magistrate report, which
used to take a couple of hours now takes me most of the day. Even
then I'm not sure I got it all.
They've had a computer system at magistrate court for years, although I've been at it long enough to remember when the daily activity sheets were completed by hand, in triplicate. The sheets of paper were over-sized and hard to handle, but a piece of cake compared
to this new computer system.
If you go in to use the public computer terminal to find the outcome of a particular case, that's not a problem, for the most part. But if you want to see everything that happened from one date to another, it doesn't seem possible.
Last month circuit court joined on the fun.
The state Supreme
Court is moving the courts toward a paperless system, which is fine.
But this system is anything but news media-friendly.
The court orders, which are signed by a circuit judge, used to
be recorded in a book. There was one for civil cases, one for criminal cases, one for administrative orders that have to do with operating the court system, and so on.
With the exception of the books that held the orders in juvenile
cases, mental hygiene cases or family court cases dealing with divorce, child custody, adoptions, and so on, and a few orders sealed by the court, the books were open to the public.
I perused them on a regular basis to keep up with what was going
on.
Now the orders are being scanned into the computer system
instead of being recorded in books. The orders are still supposedly,
open to the public. They are, as always, in the court file, which you
can still hold in your hand.
But there are a few problems with that. For one, you have to
know what you are looking for. If you know John Doe was sentenced
recently for armed robbery, you just ask for his file, someone will
hand it to you with a smile, and the order is there, along with all the other details of the case.
That's easily done, as long as the case appears on the docket and you
are aware of it. But sometimes orders are entered in cases that were
not on the docket, and a reporter would have no idea anything even
occurred.
This happens all the time in civil cases. Judges hold hearings over
the phone, or attorneys may reach an agreement outside of a hearing
and the judge signs off on an order reflecting their agreement.
It even happens in criminal cases. Last year a former courthouse
official was sentenced to up to l0 years in prison for embezzlement.
She was released from jail after serving about four months. That
was done without a hearing. In fact, the prosecuting attorney in
the case did not even know about the early release until the newspaper
contacted her for comment. The only reason the newspaper knew was because it was entered on the order book.
The second problem is, the public computer terminal in the circuit
clerk's office does not function. It never has. There was another
public terminal before this one. It didn't work, either. But in the
case of the former courthouse official, even if the public computer
was working, I still would not have known the order was entered
because the case was not on the docket. Heck, even the prosecutor
did not know.
So, in the future, a judge can look tough in handing out a long
sentence when everyone is watching. Then, when no one is around,
he can reverse that order, and no one will be the wiser.
That may not be the intent of this new system, but it is the outcome.
For democracy to work, the public has to be aware of what their
government is doing.
Poorly planned computer systems, like the ones being implemented
in the West Virginia courts, will only deny the public
information they need about the system they are paying for and
make it harder to keep government serving the public instead of the
other way around.
See also HUR HERALD REPORTS OF INCIDENTS, CRIMES AND DISPOSITIONS OF MAGISTRATE COURT CASES WILL BE LIMITED
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