Tag: courthouse safety

Minnesota’s federal court will continue with Zoom trials even after COVID

In an interview with Law360, Chief Judge John Tunheim of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota said that his district will continue with civil trials over Zoom even after the coronavirus pandemic no longer makes them necessary. A snippet of the interview:

Our plan at this point is to resume jury trials, and in-person hearings to the extent necessary, on May 3. All of our staff will be vaccinated and beyond the two-week period following the second shot, so we think that by May 1 we should be in pretty good shape for jurors coming in.

I do plan to continue, and urge our other judges to continue, to do as many hearings on Zoom as possible. It’s worked really, really well, and we’re still not in a position where we want a lot of people coming into the courthouse.

I think using Zoom is a very effective tool for bench trials. For jury trials it’s a little more complicated, as we know. But we have a backlog of civil cases that we’re probably not going to get to right away because of the criminal case backlog. We are, for the time being, using only two courtrooms, one in Minneapolis, one in St. Paul, both with substantial amounts of plexiglass. Only using two courtrooms makes it hard to catch up.

I expect to see much more along these lines in the coming weeks and months.

Another federal courthouse attacked by a mob

Violent Antifa mobs in Seattle and Portland attacked a number of government buildings on Inauguration Day, including the William Kenzo Nakamura Courthouse in downtown Seattle.

(Photo from Seattle Police Twitter feed.)

Seattle’s roving band of thugs are no doubt wholly ignorant of William Kenzo Nakamura, an American hero who lost his life fighting for the 42d Regimental Combat Team in Italy in World War II. He was hailed for his extraordinary bravery, and posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Medal of Honor.

These domestic terrorists also set fires and damaged private businesses. Make no mistake: they are as dangerous and evil as the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.

When similar riots engulfed the Pacific Northwest last summer — disrupting businesses, injuring innocent bystanders, and destroying Portland’s federal courthouse — state and local officials only made excuses for the violence. Will these cowardly politicians finally stand up for the citizens they took an oath to protect? Will the Biden Administration work to assure the safety of the federal employees who work in the courthouse and the members of the public who enter it?

In-person jury trials to resume in Brooklyn

For the first time in seven months, Brooklyn courts will begin to hold jury trials inside courthouses. A number of safety measures have been implemented, including temperature checks, plexiglass screens, and upgraded air filtration systems.

During the last several months, a number of courts worldwide held jury trials outdoors or in large, socially distanced venues. As winter approaches (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least), trials will have no choice but to move indoors. Hopefully they prove to be safe and successful.

The peculiar environment of reopened courtrooms

As the summer passes its midpoint, debates are raging in every corner of the country about how to approach the coming school year. Some feel that reopening schools will place teachers and students at unacceptable risk; others note that the mental and emotional damage to children from continued social isolation requires every effort to conduct classes in person. On two points, however, everyone seems to be in agreement. First, no option is particularly good. And second, even if schools do reopen, their layout, schedule, and operation will be markedly different than before.

Courts are facing the identical crisis, as their social and constitutional responsibilities to administer justice without delay brush up against their responsibilities to protect public health. And those courts that have reopened look and feel very different than they did six months ago.

This article points out some of the changes that have been implemented in reopened state courthouses. They feel at once dramatic and mundane: requiring attorneys and clients to communicate only by passing notes through a plexiglass window, holding trials in convention centers (or even fairgrounds!), and asking attorneys and judges to hold sidebars by walkie-talkie (with white noise pumped into the courtroom to avoid others overhearing). And notwithstanding these changes, the general fear of COVID-19 exposure remains pervasive.

This is all deeply unsettling, yet there may be a silver lining. Although unwelcome, the pandemic is forcing an explosion of creativity in our institutions. Some of today’s courthouse solutions may be jettisoned as soon as it is safe to do so, but I also suspect that some will prove worthy of keeping around.

Making sense of the recent Congressional testimony on courts and technology

On June 25, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet held a hearing entitled Federal Courts During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Best Practices, Opportunities for Innovation, and Lessons for the Future. The hearings featured testimony (via Zoom, of course) from federal district judge David Campbell, Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack, former federal district judge (and current Executive Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute), and Melissa Wasser of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The testimony was interesting, as was the choice of witnesses. The entire hearing (all 102 minutes of it) can be found directly below, with some thoughts on what transpired to follow.

Continue reading “Making sense of the recent Congressional testimony on courts and technology”

The challenge of reopening courts

A number of recent news stories have emphasized the reluctance of many white-collar workers to go back to the office, even when their places of business are authorized to reopen. Extensive safety precautions, combined with the ability of many employees to work effectively from home, has even led some to proclaim the death of the modern office.

As admirable a job as courts have done with videoconferencing during the coronavirus pandemic, they do not have the same luxury of transitioning everyone to a long-term work-from-home arrangement. And so courts are reopening around the country. And they are finding difficult challenges in front of them. Safety and social distancing guidelines means that there is less space for observers and unsettled questions about enforcement of safety norms. Returning judges and attorneys are also facing heavily backlogged dockets and the further postponement of trials and hearings. It will require patience and creativity to get things back on an even keel.

Federal courts issue guidance for reopening, including conducting jury trials

The federal courts’ COVID-19 Judicial Task Force released a detailed report on Wednesday, containing recommendations for conducting jury trials and convening grand juries during the coronavirus pandemic. This Bloomberg Law piece provides a bit of additional context.

The report relies on guidance from the Center for Disease Control, and acknowledges that district courts may be ready to open, and open more fully, at different times during the next few weeks. It is a careful, detailed, and thoughtful report. It also illustrates the complex issues that virtually every organization — public or private — is facing right now regarding reopening: cleaning, social distancing, virus screening, transparency, scheduling, travel safety, and so on. Ask any school administrator, business owner, local bureaucrat, or public official, and you’ll hear about the same predictive difficulties.

The bottom line: courts are navigating this crisis just like the rest of us. Preparation is essential, but only time will provide real clarity.

 

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.

Another Brazilian court will hide its judges’ identities to protect them

The Rio de Janiero State Court in Brazil will begin prosecuting corruption cases through special “faceless” courts designed to hide the identity of the presiding judges. It is the seventh Brazilian state to implement such a system. The change is coming after more than twenty judges received police protection from death threats by gangs and organized crime.

Under the new system, three judges will rotate every sixty days and all decisions will be signed by the principal judge. Variations of the system were used to protect judges in Colombia in the 1990s.

This is obviously an extreme development, and the safety of the judiciary must be taken seriously. But it comes at a serious cost — the accused will not be able to know the identity of, the very person who will be condemning them to prison (or worse). It’s a dark moment for everyone when due process must be diluted for the sake of judicial safety.

Not all courthouses are the same

Some are glorious temples to the administration of justice. Others are originally built as school buildings, retrofitted to house courtrooms and judges’ chambers, and must combat mold, crumbling walls, and occasional gunfire. The Tampa Bay Times offers an insightful report on the challenges faced by Florida’s 2d District Court of Appeal in their substandard building, and the resource allocation issues underlying their request for new quarters.