Some area courts opt out of online files

Buckingham County residents will have to wait a few weeks to find out what’s going on in their circuit courthouse online.

The court’s clerk, Malcolm Booker Jr., said late last month that he had opted out from providing court information on the state’s free, online court case information system because potential jurors may use it to research cases. Booker said more recently that the court will be back on the system as of Dec. 1.

Booker said some people told him that they missed the system.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that it will probably be better for us and the public to make it available,” Booker said. “We realize now that the public … likes to go to the system to see what’s going on.”

Buckingham was one of eight circuit courts that don’t provide information online and seems to be the first to ask to remove itself from the opt-in system, said Paul F. DeLosh, the director of Judicial Services in the state Supreme Court’s Office of the Executive Secretary.

“He is the only one I can recall in all of these years,” said DeLosh of Booker, who said he made the decision to remove Buckingham from the state Supreme Court’s system. DeLosh said his office was notified about Bucking-ham’s request to put the records back online.

Of the eight circuit courts that don’t make information available online at the moment, three are in Central Virginia — Buckingham and Greene counties and the city of Charlottesville. Circuit courts in Alexandria, Chesterfield, Fairfax, Hen-rico and King & Queen also don’t put information online.

Marie C. Durrer, Greene’s circuit court clerk, said her systems would need to be updated to use the state system and that residents haven’t demanded the online information.

“People come right in or we look up information for them,” Durrer said.

Concerns about privacy and confidentiality are part of the reason why the system isn’t in place in Charlottesville. Paul C. Garrett, the city’s circuit court clerk, said he’s also worried that sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers or the name of minors, would somehow get online. The clerk also questioned who would be to blame if that information appeared — the clerk’s office or the state’s Supreme Court.

Garrett’s office also is in the middle of a backfile conversion project that will put court documents from 1965 to the present online to be accessed through a subscription service, a service for which he said citizens have been clamoring.

“There is no great demand to see the information on the Supreme Court system,” Garrett said.

If the court wants its information online, DeLosh said, a clerk must have the right case management information and must contact the Supreme Court to be included.

Once they’ve taken that step, DeLosh said, some of the information that the clerks put into their case management system will automatically appear online.

The public can access a circuit court’s information by visiting http://wasdmz2.courts.state.va.us/CJISWeb/circuit.html.

Case information that is generally available includes the case number, the names of the involved parties, the filing date and hearing dates. Criminal cases also show a defendant’s abbreviated birth date, offense date, charge and final disposition of the case. Civil cases also show the type of lawsuit filed. Public documents such as motions and indictments are not available on the system.