Justice Dixon spoke about the state of the Indiana Supreme Court. He came to the bench 22 years ago. Back then, 90% of Indiana S. Ct. opinions were criminal. Court of Appeals was the usual last resort in civil cases. Lawyers and judges had an automatic change of venue. Technology has exploded.
He noted Supreme Court agencies moving to 30 S. Meridian, additional judges for the Indiana Court of Appeals. Trial court reorganization – lately there has been a lot of talk about how court activities shouldn’t be the expense of county government. If the State starts picking up the tab, restructuring of some sort seem inevitable. With a 75 year old age limit and the current age of court of appeals judges, the composition of the Court of Appeals will change dramatically over the next 15 years.
The Supreme Court is disposing of 1,100 cases per year and issuing about 200 opinions. Civil cases make up 32% of the caseload and criminal make up about 55% (down from 90% 22 years ago).
The Indiana Rules of Procedure are being updated to address questions of electronic discovery – PCs, servers, archives, PDAs, iPods, GPS, automobile “black boxes.” Preservation of data in these areas.
Courts will probably be moving to electronic filing (federal courts have already gone a long way down this road). More teleconferencing for court hearings. (Video conferencing is getting better, easier, and cheaper. I’ll probably have to start keeping my office a little more organized if my desk is going to show up on a judge’s video screen.) Certainly this has the potential to save clients money if they don’t have to pay for me to drive to a court house in a different county for a few minutes in a pretrial hearing. Some of this can be handled by telephone, but I think something is lost when you can’t see the people with whom you’re trying to communicate.
JTAC initiatives (sounds like they’re biting off an awful lot for this system) – Instant traffic conviction reports to the BMV; protective order registry; jury pools; marriage license e-filings; eCWS traffic tickets (police can scan driver’s license, registry information, generate ticket and transmit information to the prosecutors — god forbid there be time constraints on wielding the awesome power of the State); statewide warrant registry; statewide judicial case management system (Monroe County and Marion County/Washington Twshp small claims are testing the system; 2009 it should be rolling out to the rest of the counties that want it.)
Voice recognition software is becoming more reliable for court reporting purposes. In Kentucky, no court reporter is used because everything is video taped. (I’m a text kind of guy – all video concerns me a bit.) More video recording of police interrogations — often times initiated by the police themselves as they get tired of being falsely accused of inappropriate behavior by suspects.
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