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Judicial Conference Approves Pilot Program for Remote Public Access to Criminal Case Files

The Judicial Conference has approved creation of a pilot program to allow selected courts to provide Internet access to criminal case files. The Conference adopted a recommendation from its Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, and delegated to the Committee the authority to choose participating courts.

The action, taken during the Conference's biannual meeting in March, follows last September's adoption of a Conference policy to make most civil and bankruptcy case documents available electronically to the same extent they are available at the courthouse. The Conference at that time voted to prohibit public remote electronic access to criminal case documents, with the understanding that the prohibition would be re-examined within the next two years.

Conference members were told in a report accompanying the Committee's recommendation that the Federal Judicial Center has agreed to track the participating courts within a two-year time frame and provide the Committee with information to aid its review of the criminal cases access policy. The Committee's 2001 Report on Privacy and Public Access to Electronic Case Files is available on the Judiciary's website at http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/att81501.pdf

In related action, the Conference voted to amend its policy by allowing Internet access to criminal case files when requests for documents in certain "high profile" cases impose extraordinary demands on a court's resources. Electronic access would be permitted only if all parties consent and the trial judge or presiding judge of an appellate panel finds that such access is warranted.

The Conference's Executive Committee recently had approved a temporary exception to the prohibition on Internet access to criminal case files. That action was generated by a very high number of media and public requests for copies of documents in U.S. v. Moussaoui, currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Conference action makes the policy exception permanent.

In other action, the Conference

• Recommended the President reappoint to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. (E.D. NY) and appoint Judge Ricardo Hinojosa (S. D. Tex.).
• Amended the current electronic public access fee schedule for public users obtaining information through a federal Judiciary Internet site to cap the total for any document at the fee for 30 pages; the fee per page is seven cents.
• Approved a Five-Year Courthouse Project Plan for Fiscal Years 2003-2007.

Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger (M.D. Fla.) chair of the Conference Committee on the Administration of the Magistrate Judges System, and Judicial Conference member Chief Judge Charles R. Butler, Jr. (S.D. Ala.), attended the reception following the Conference meeting at the Supreme Court. Also attending were...		Chair of the Judicial Conference Executive Committee Chief Judge Charles H. Haden, II (S.D. W. Va.), and AO Director Leonidas Ralph Mecham.
	(Above) Judicial Conference members (left to right) Chief Judge R. Lanier Anderson III (11th Cir.); Chief Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr. (6th Cir.); and Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, (D.C. Cir.).
(Left to right) Judicial Conference member Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III (4th Cir.); Judge David F. Levi (E. D. Calif.), chair of the Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules; and Judge Anthony J. Scirica (3rd Cir.), chair of the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure.