2024, February 2024, Technology

Amy Wood, Clerk of the Court, Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One

Background

Digital evidence has long presented a problem across the justice community.  A video recording taken by a police department must be transmitted to the prosecutors, offered into evidence at the trial court and conveyed as part of the record on appeal.  This can lead to many copies of the same file as well as challenges for each organization to be able to maintain software necessary to view different formats.

The Chief Justice of Arizona’s Judicial Branch created a Task Force to study the issue and make recommendations.  They issued their final report in 2017.  The Task Force presented numerous recommendations including training, rule changes and the development of a portal. 

The Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts followed through with an RFP for a portal to hold digital evidence for the courts and the contract was awarded to Thomson Reuters with the Case Center (then known as CaseLines) product.

After establishing an environment and basic configuration, the Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts engaged trial courts in establishing policies and procedures related to digital evidence.  Once a pilot began with the first trial court, work began thinking about appellate courts joining in the use of Arizona’s digital evidence portal (an instance of Case Center).

At the time of this writing, the Court of Appeals, Division One has over 180 active cases with digital evidence in Arizona’s Case Center implementation.

Arizona’s General Process Overview

The trial court allows exhibits offered into evidence in the courtroom to be uploaded into a Case Center case.  The trial court clerk’s office controls access to the case.  Exhibits are admitted or rejected electronically and tagged electronically with the side of the case (e.g., Admitted P 4 is plaintiff’s exhibit 4 in Figure 1).

Figure 1 Exhibit in Case Center

While the trial court has jurisdiction, the trial court controls who has access to the exhibits through security settings in Case Center.

When a case is appealed, Arizona trial courts are responsible for preparing the record by creating an index of record and sending all documents electronically to the Court of Appeals using a custom application.  Case Center has been incorporated into this process.  The trial court creates a “Digital Exhibit Cover Sheet” that contains a link to the digital exhibits in Case Center, See Figures 2 and 3.  The document also lists each piece of digital evidence.  The link only works for those who have been granted access.

Figure 2 Arizona Exhibit List cover sheet format for Case Center

Figure 3 Arizona format of Case Center Exhibits as they appear on the list placed into the traditional record

Appellate Implementation

Some of the important things that had to be worked through in extending the work to the appellate courts included the following:

  • Receiving Access.  How the clerk’s office receives access from the trial court,

Arizona chose to create and maintain an “Invite List” with all Appellate Clerk’s Office Employees that is utilized by the trial courts to “invite” the Appellate Clerk’s Office to the Case.

  • Extending Access Internally.  How to provide access to the court.

Arizona had two logical choices, either extend access to a specific panel at the time they are assigned (for us this is “At Issue”) or create and maintain a full court invite list.  We chose to have the full court invite list because it keeps digital evidence accessible in the same manner as the rest of our record.  Once the Clerk’s Office brings the digital exhibit list into the electronic record in our case management system, we invite the rest of the court to the digital evidence case.

  • Standardizing User Set Up.  How to ensure users register themselves in a consistent manner

Early on, there was recognition that new users would interpret the standard fields for registration in different ways and that this would create issues for maintaining access over time.  Division One chose to keep the registration process centralized in the clerk’s office.  A Clerk’s Office staff person sets up the new user and then sends them instructions for verifying the account and resetting their password.

  • Reference in the Record.  How to maintain user accounts, and how to maintain an indication in the court case management system that digital evidence exists in a portal.

In Arizona, we chose to require the trial court to enter a document into the record which is sent to the appellate court along with the rest of the record.  This includes a list of what is in the portal as well as a link to the digital evidence for the case.

  • Appellate Counsel.  Access to the digital evidence for new appellate counsel.

In Arizona, we are using the “Notice of Appearance” to trigger inviting new counsel to the case.  We have also advised the Bar that it can be noted in the Notice of Appearance that Digital Evidence access is necessary.

  • Mandate. What happens to access to the digital evidence after mandate/terminate

In Arizona, our mandates now tell the trial courts that access to the appellate court can be turned off (analogous to returning paper record).

  • Sealed Digital Exhibits.  How to manage digital evidence that has been sealed.

Arizona chose to allow sealed digital exhibits in the portal and to follow the same security processes that are in place with other sealed material.  No parties or attorneys may access the sealed material online through the portal.

  • Public Access.  How to manage public access requests to digital evidence

Because of some limitations on security, features available for trial courts to share publicly in Arizona do not work at the Appellate level.  In Arizona, we have, for the time being, relied on downloading digital exhibits and burning them to CDs whenever the digital exhibits include restricted or sealed exhibits.

  • Multiple Appeals.  How to best manage evidence “bundles” relative to the same trial court case being appealed more than once. 

A short list of advantages and struggles are noted below.  Some of these may be product specific, but others may be things to consider regardless of the product used.

Advantages

  • Record is checked in and maintained more easily without envelopes containing jump drives, CDs and the like.
  • The entire panel of judges (and their staff people) easily has access to evidence that previously might have only been available to one chambers at a time.
  • Tools are available to “mark” places in videos, notes on exhibits, etc.  These can be stored by user or shared with a small group (such as the appellate panel of judges).
  • The viewers support a multitude of technology sets such that IT staff are spending less time trouble-shooting access to various digital formats.
  • Chambers return of digital exhibits to the clerk’s office is no longer necessary for items in the portal,
  • The mandate process is easier with fewer physical exhibits needing to be returned.
  • The goal of storing one copy for multiple entities to access has been met, and may be expanded.

Struggles

  • Initially chambers were tempted to download the digital exhibits into another work area.  That defeated the purpose of using one centralized area across organizations and the benefit of all of the viewers.  This goal had to be reinforced across the court.
  • Appellate case number does not appear, we must rely on the trial court case number if searching directly in the portal (rather than following a link)
  • Adding new people to the court does not give them access to cases previously received (only going forward), user management has been one of the biggest challenges.
  • Initial training occurred with the pilot, but many cases that came in did not make it far enough into the process to go to chambers.  As the number of cases increased, more training has been necessary.
  • Although extensive efforts by the Administrative Office were made to educate the Bar, members of the Appellate Practice Section were not initially targeted.
  • Invites come from a specific email address.  Some folks who have been invited have not realized it and had to add the email to their accepted email address lists.
  • Security settings are limited.  Trial courts retain the most access which has created some limitations for the appellate courts in terms of how to provide public access.  The security functionality does not permit parsing at the level that would be most beneficial.

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