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Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Ind. Courts - More on "Plan to links 400 courts hits a wall"

The AP today has a brief story today headlined "Work stops on statewide court-computer network." The story ends with this quote:

Without a statewide system, a judge in one county has no easy way of knowing whether a defendant about to be sentenced faces a string of criminal charges elsewhere in the state.
I checked back to yesterday's story in the Indianapolis Star and found that, indeed, the sidebar headed "benefits of the system" listed:
Help judges find a suspect's criminal background in other counties as they weigh bond and sentencing decisions.
I'm not a litigator, but I've learned a little about sentencing recently and this did not sound right, so I asked a fellow blogger for his reaction:
Judges are not supposed to go out and do their own factual research, we know that they must rely on the parties to present evidence in court. Prosecutors and probation officers would have a bigger need for access to records from the other 91 counties on pending criminal charges and prior records (The NCIC database is notoriously unreliable in this respect). As a defense attorney, I would strenuously object to a judge taking some type of judicial notice of a record found on a computer database. Instead, the prosecutor would have to get certified copies of the sentencing judgment for submission into evidence at a contested sentencing hearing (like a habitual offender hearing). Normally, the probation officer compiles a criminal history from available records and an interview with the defendant. At sentencing, either party can challenge the record stated in the probation officer's report, and the Court will specifically ask the defendant if the report is correct.
Later on today I hope to do a post on the private company that has put the case tracking information of 20 Indiana counties, so far, online. Yesterday I contacted the company, Doxpop, LLC, for information. They have been very helpful. One issue I raised was the question of fines and fees. The Star story yesterday reported:
The breakdown surfaced in December, as Marion County officials tested a piece of software designed for Indiana civil courts. They found it lacked a critical element -- the ability to keep tabs on court fines and costs. Officials at Computer Associates, based in Islandia, N.Y., declined to be interviewed for this article.
I asked Ray Ontko, President of DoxPop: "A brief review of what you sent indicates that it also tracks fees and fines, which appears to have been a downfall of the Court's system." His response:
The fees, fines, and payments are a strange bird. In Indiana, they are tracked using a method that isn't quite like a normal double-entry bookkeeping system. Since we partner with vendors who already provide a solution in Indiana, it hasn't been hard to get the information. CA hasn't been working with local government in Indiana; it doesn't surprise me that they ran into difficulties.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 9, 2005 09:09 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts