RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Henrico County Circuit Court will be the last court in Virginia that blocks online access to public records after Chesterfield County Circuit Court’s criminal records become available online.
Chesterfield County Circuit Court Clerk Judy Worthington has asked the Virginia Supreme Court to allow online public viewing of abstracts of the court’s criminal records through the state’s computerized case management system. Once Chesterfield goes online, the public will have Internet access to criminal data in all of the state’s 125 general district courts and 119 of its 120 circuit courts, either using the state’s system or one of their own, the Richmond Times-Dispatch (https://bit.ly/1bhUNXL) reported.
Worthington will not release Chesterfield County Circuit Court records for civil cases online, which means the high court’s judicial-services unit has to make a programming change to segregate Chesterfield’s criminal and civil data. Paul DeLosh, the director of judicial services for the Virginia Supreme Court, said the work should be completed in about two months.
“I’ve never really had any angst about posting criminal records online,” Worthington told the newspaper in a recent email. “I had made several inquiries over the years regarding the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ability to segregate civil and criminal data so our criminal cases could be posted; however, the Supreme Court did not have the capability to post only criminal data - it was all or nothing.”
Worthington added that “in light of recent enhancements” to the Supreme Court system, she believed it was time to inquire again about the court’s technological capabilities.
Worthington said civil court information involves “personal disputes between private individuals.”
The names of the parties and the dispositions of their cases, criminal and civil, can be viewed in the state’s online system. But the system does not include court documents.
DeLosh said Supreme Court’s information technology unit has had the ability to segregate the data since the online case information system was developed in 2000-01. He said Worthington’s request two months ago was the first his office has received for such a programming change.
Henrico Circuit Court Clerk Yvonne Smith told the newspaper that various system upgrades that the Supreme Court has talked about making have been slow to occur or still have not happened. She is skeptical that the programming change for Chesterfield will occur anytime soon, so “there is plenty of time for me to give this consideration.”
Attorney Travis R. Williams, the president-elect of the Chesterfield Bar Association, said the association would like to see complete access to include civil court data. He called Worthington’s decision to allow online access to criminal information a “very helpful start in the right direction.”
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Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, https://www.timesdispatch.com
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