National News
Mecklenburg to put records online for Greg Hardy and Randall Kerrick cases
February 09, 2015 posted by Steve Brownstein
Those interested in Greg Hardy’s upcoming domestic abuse trial will soon be able to follow along from home.
For the first time, Mecklenburg County court officials will be putting selective documents online for high-profile criminal cases. They’re starting with Hardy, the Carolina Panthers star defensive end who is scheduled to be back in court this month in a case with national exposure.
Newly elected Clerk of Court Elisa Chinn Gary, who ran on a platform of innovation and greater public access to court records, said the new program should be up and running before attorneys begin picking Hardy’s jury on Feb. 9.
A courthouse group, which includes the clerk and the trial court administrator’s office, studied the online practices of courts systems in Georgia, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. They’re now working with the webmasters of the state court system’s website for final technical details.
In no more than a week, those interested in the Hardy trial can surf to the Mecklenburg County page on the North Carolina courts’ website and peruse such case documents as arrest warrants, affidavits and judicial orders.
“It gives us one point of contact for the public or anyone else who is interested,” said Trial Court Administrator Todd Nuccio. “We hope it becomes a service to the community.”
Chinn Gary said the effort is starting with highly publicized cases such as Hardy’s and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Randall Kerrick’s manslaughter trial in hopes of keeping the community informed. The move will also limit the time and expense spent by the clerk’s office to meet frequent public and media demands for paper records in those cases, she said.
“I think it’s terrific,” said Charlotte attorney Gary Jackson, who specializes in cases involving the public’s right to know. “Whether they’re additional documents, exhibits, jury instructions, whatever they intend to do, the more information the better. It brings the courthouse to the community.”
Most federal court records already are available on a pay system known as PACER (Public Access to Electronic Court Records), which charges account holders a nominal fee for each page they read. In return, millions of criminal and civil documents are only a few keystrokes away.
Greg Hurley, senior knowledge management analyst for the National Center for State Courts, said most local court records in North Carolina and elsewhere reside in a state of “practical obscurity.” Translation: The public can see them, but only if the public travels to the courthouse and asks for the file.
It may be decades before states have something resembling PACER, Hurley said, though he added: “The tide is changing. I think we’re seeing more and more things from state courts put online.”
