Virtual Court Proceedings—North Carolina Court Actors Weigh In

During the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal court systems moved to virtual proceedings to maintain essential court operations while minimizing the spread of COVID-19. To understand more about that transition and the lessons it holds for the future, we surveyed North Carolina trial judges, prosecutors, defenders, and clerks of court about virtual court. Our survey included questions about changes to court proceedings during the pandemic, the benefits of and concerns about virtual court, best practice suggestions for virtual proceedings, support for various virtual proceedings, experiences with using various technology platforms, and other aspects of virtual proceedings. We received responses from 182 people (Figure 1) from all 100 North Carolina counties. Figure 1. Survey Respondents’ Current Role in the Criminal Justice System Our full report is available here. In this post we summarize some top line results. Change in Use of Virtual Proceedings. According to respondents, virtual first appearances were the most common type of virtual proceeding, both before and during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, relatively small numbers of respondents had participated in virtual guilty plea proceedings, bond motion hearings, counsel advisements, probation violation hearings, capacity hearings or search warrant proceedings. During the pandemic, some of those numbers changed considerably (Table 1).  Table 1. Proceedings Conducted Virtually Before and During the Pandemic *Other than at first appearance Virtual Proceedings–Overall Advantages Our full report details advantages cited by respondents with respect to each of the proceedings listed in Table 1. Across all types of virtual proceedings, however, the most commonly reported advantages were increased [...]