Category: state courts

Nevada judicial candidate accused of effectively impersonating a sitting judge

Nevada has a long and storied history of dreadful judicial campaigns, lagging perhaps only New York and Illinois in overall election dysfunction. As one relatively recent example, three years a Las Vegas judge falsely claimed the endorsement of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in a badly photoshopped advertisement.

The latest questionable developments come in the form of two complaints filed with the state judicial review board by current judicial candidates, alleging that some of their opponents have violated various campaign and ethics rules. The more intriguing of the two complaints alleges that Family Court candidate Margaret Pickard posted a video to Facebook in which she sat on the bench in a courtroom in an outfit closely resembling a judicial robe — intimating, incorrectly, that she was already an incumbent judge.

Ms. Pickard did not actually don a judicial robe for her ad, but her dress is strikingly similar to a judicial garment. In any event, I will let readers decide for themselves.

Face mask requirements pose a new challenge as courts reopen

Courthouses around the country are slowly reopening, with a panoply of health and social distancing guidelines. One of the most basic rules is that everyone in the courthouse must wear a face mask — a wholly sensible approach from a public health perspective. But mandatory face coverings also pose interesting new challenges for lawyers, judges, and juries, because of our reliance on facial expressions to assess emotion and credibility.

Courts are awakening to the problem, and trying to develop creative ways to permit certain participants to uncover their faces while protecting public health. One possible solution is to conduct voir dire by videoconference.  Another is to cover witness and jury boxes with clear plexiglass, an admittedly second-best solution. As one Texas judge noted,

in Harris County, the courts are already installing plexiglass to protect the clerks, court reporters and bailiffs, who sit in high-traffic areas of courtrooms.

“I joke our courtrooms are going to look like a hockey rink,” he said. “We’re not putting plexiglass up around the jury box, because we haven’t figured out how we are going to conduct the jury trials. This is an issue that’s causing a lot of concern, because people sitting in the jury box are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder.”

Whatever the solution, the courtrooms will certainly feel different for a while.

Texas holds first Zoom jury trial

Yesterday, Texas held the first jury trial to be conducted exclusively through Zoom videoconferencing. The one-day summary jury trial was also livestreamed on YouTube.

This represents a major development, given that every other jurisdiction has simply postponed jury trials until courthouses reopen.  And judges are increasingly opening to the idea of remote trials in some form. On the other hand, some judges remain steadfastly opposed to trials outside the physical courtroom, and with courthouses beginning to reopen in the coming weeks, it remains to be seen how common videoconference trials will become.

Texas court system suffers ransomware attack

Last week, the Texas appeals courts and judicial agencies suffered a ransomware attack that disabled their IT network for several days. The situation was caught quickly and state court administrators created a temporary website. Officials have stressed that no personal information was stolen, and that the attack had no effect on the courts’ use of online hearings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Georgia’s state courts experienced a similar ransomware attack last July.

Although no harm seems to have come out of this latest incident, it does underscore the vulnerability of technological networks and the potential effect on the administration of justice.

North Carolina anticipates major backlogs when courts resume operations, asks attorneys for help

In anticipation of a reopening on June 1, the North Carolina courts have asked attorneys to mail in their filings well in advance of that deadline. The court system expects a massive crunch in paperwork once it resumes full operations. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, filings are down 54% for the year, and case dispositions are down 65%.

Oregon forges ahead with some jury trials

While most states are delaying trials or holding them via videoconference, Oregon’s courts are continuing in-person jury trials for many criminal defendants. Social distancing guidelines have been put into place, but there is much trepidation on the part of jurors and observers alike.

“It is very unusual,” said Paula Hannaford-Agor, the director of the Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit organization that supports state court systems. “To the best of my knowledge, Oregon has been the only state that I’m aware of that has been doing trials.”

Across the country some of the orders limiting or halting court functions are set to expire, Hannaford-Agor said, while others states have closures or limited court functions that extend until June and even July. Though Multnomah County has reopened trials, neighboring Clark County, Washington, has decided to delay all trials until at least July 6.

“Jury service is the very definition of community spread,” Hannaford-Agor said. “There’s probably no better way to spread the infection than putting anywhere from 50 to 300 people in a room together sitting side-by-side for hours at a time.”

In Oregon, many trials have been rescheduled. But for some criminal defendants who are in custody that’s not possible. Oregon law has less flexibility than other states when it comes to speedy trials and no emergency provision to delay them. In custody defendants get the right to a [trial] within 60 days of their arrest.

Another look at state courts handling the COVID crisis

This story nicely illustrates how the New York court system absorbed the initial blow of coronavirus-related closings, and is now slowly reopening its civil docket via videoconference. The story is probably not an unusual one for state courts in this unusual time, but it seems worth logging some of them here for posterity.

Three New York judges die from COVID-19

Sad, if likely inevitable, news: COVID-19 deaths are now directly impacting the judiciary. Yesterday, New York state officials reported that 168 state court employees had contracted the novel coronavirus, including 17 state judges. At least three of those judges — all in their mid-60s — have now died from the virus.

Aside from the personal loss and grief that comes from the sickness and death of colleagues and coworkers, the New York court system now finds itself with fewer human resources to keep up with its work. Already the system (like all court systems) has slowed its pace and transitioned at least in part to video and teleconferencing, but the attrition in the internal workforce with complicate matters even further. There are likely to be ripple effects throughout the criminal and civil justice systems as judges, court staff, attorneys, parties, and witnesses battle the disease personally and in relation to their families and friends.

State courts extend and explain COVID-19 protocols

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Colorado and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts respectively sent letters to their registered attorneys, informing them of recent measures taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Massachusetts will be extending its courthouse closures for most matters, including all jury and bench trials, while tolling statutes of limitations through the end of May. Colorado has delegated considerable administrative decisionmaking authority to the chief judge of each judicial district, in acknowledgement of the different circumstances and available resources in each district.