It was heartening to read Albuquerque Metro Court Chief Judge Maria Dominguez’s June 4 column in the Albuquerque Journal.
In the column she briefly describes how the State Supreme Court at the beginning of the pandemic began allowing fewer and fewer people into court buildings to conduct business and attend courtroom proceedings. Eventually the Supreme Court believed there was no way to safely allow people into courtrooms and began to depend on technology to hold hearings of all kinds.
While technology had helped many during these restrictive times, the courts remained hamstrung and the public, probably unknowingly, suffered for it.
We like it when First Judicial District Court Judge Jason Lidyard refers to his court as “the people’s court.” All courts truly are that. For the past 15 months, not so much.
Media folks have spent a lot of time trying to watch and listen to electronic hearings. It’s maddening.
Let’s start with the “untech-savvy” folks. Remember you’ve got people from all walks of life in these hearings. Some know tech and others don’t even own a cell phone. So you’ve got people who have muted themselves who spend 10 minutes learning how to press the unmute button.
In the meantime we’re all listening to a barking dog or The Price is Right at volume 10 in the background. The many Lidyard hearings we’ve listened to have proven he has the patience of Job.
We’ve heard him say 100 times, “Miss/Sir you’re muted. I need you to press star six to unmute yourself,” just calm as a mountain lake at dawn.
Then there are the many people who just don’t understand that they’re in a courtroom. Before hearings and during breaks they speak with each other like they’re in a bar, F-bombs flying while they bad mouth a co-worker, who is listening to them with the rest of us.
The decorum inside a courtroom is never in doubt. It’s officious and proper. The decorum inside a virtual courtroom is whatever goes. In the past year we heard many more disrespectful defendants and witnesses than in the previous 20 years inside a courtroom combined. It’s that safety of distance. You’ll flip a driver off from your car but would never do that face to face.
The biggest problem though is with jury trials. When the State Supreme Court started to hold in person jury trials they went the either/or route. So if there was a jury trial in person, no virtual attendance.
That would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that they reserve one seat for all media to share and, in the case of the John Powell trial last fall, three seats for family and the public. The rest of the Tierra Amarilla courthouse was used to keep jurors six feet apart.
That’s not the people’s court. That’s not an open courtroom at all.
We were in the same boat last week with Rio Arriba County Sheriff James Lujan’s trial. Two seats for the public, one seat for a media person. We wonder what the courts thought we should do: have a battle royale in the lobby, winner gets the seat; draw straws, losers don’t get a story; trade off and everyone gets bits and pieces. This was not thought out at all. The State Supreme Court was putting procedure and health ahead of the public’s right to know.
The compromise the Administrative Office of the Courts fell upon was placing a camera and microphone as far away as possible from all the speaking parties. Add to this people speaking are wearing masks. You can’t hear the mumbling and you can’t identify who is talking.
The icing on the cake was when at about 2 p.m., June 4 the jury came in and told the judge they could not reach a decision and the judge declared a mistrial. No one attending electronically knew that because no one turned back on the awful camera and muffled microphone.
Dominguez states in her column trials will become more open. “We hope that in the next few months we can have people present in the courthouse and allow the public to observe in-person as well.”
Months?
If judges, attorneys of all stripes, staff and jurors are all vaccinated, they don’t need the six feet rule, nor masks. If these folks aren’t vaccinated, they should wear masks. Otherwise what was the point of vaccinations? It was to protect us from the virus. We are protected. Those who refuse the vaccination are rolling the dice on their own. That’s not our problem.
The people’s courts can get back to functioning normally now. There are a slew of delayed jury trials coming this summer and fall. The people need to know what happens in the courtroom. The current situation is not tenable.