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Saturday, April 14, 2007
Courts - "Kentucky will retain all court records forever"
Updating this ILB entry from Feb. 28th and this one from March 7th, Andrew Wolfson and Jason Riley of the Louisville Courier Journal report today:
Kentucky will retain all court records forever, the state's top court administrator said, addressing criticism after tens of thousands of old Jefferson County files were destroyed.Records from across the state will be stored in a Frankfort warehouse that the Administrative Office of the Courts has budgeted $100,000 to rent, said Jason Nemes, who was named the agency's director Thursday after serving on an interim basis.
But the AOC has yet to respond to another criticism -- that the agency bars police from statewide access to its online court records system. * * *
AOC's handling of court records emerged as a hot topic last fall after the disclosure that it had destroyed misdemeanor records at least five years old in Jefferson County. Prosecutors and probation officers complained the purge made it more difficult to prove an offender's past misconduct.
A report in February blasted the AOC for "indifference, inexperience, intransigence and ineptness."
The report -- from a panel appointed by Chief Justice Joseph Lambert -- also recommended that the AOC re-examine its policy on police access to records.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 14, 2007 12:28 PM
Posted to Courts in general