Houston Chronicle Editorial: Making virtual courts a permanent option in Texas is a win for justice

The pandemic-era move to virtual courtrooms wasn’t always seamless. Between the lawyer who couldn’t turn off a cat face filter and defendants who couldn’t manage to keep their clothes on, every judge has a story. And Brian Warren, a Harris County criminal district court judge who won a second term last week, has heard them all. Overwhelmingly, though, Warren said the ability to conduct some court proceedings virtually has introduced a new efficiency to his courtroom. And he’s hopeful that after yet another extension earlier this month of the pandemic-era rule that expanded its use, virtual proceedings will find a more permanent place in the courtroom. Fortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction. The Texas Supreme Court preliminarily approved a new rule in October that preserves pandemic-era opportunities for virtual proceedings for some courtrooms and that is now open for comments.

On the nonprofit side, legal aid group Texas Legal Services Center is working to place up to 300 virtual access kiosks across the state to help participants who may still face barriers logging in from home. The switch to virtual early in the pandemic was more disruptive for some courts than others. It wasn’t until March 2021 when the state allowed in-person hearings to proceed without a state safety review. Certain high-stakes proceedings for jailable criminal offenses, Warren explained, often had to happen in person and so they were just put on pause initially, contributing to a backlog of cases. But under the difficult circumstances, virtual hearings seemed to have gone well for those making the change and kept courts from a total standstill. “We pivoted pretty quickly,” Ed Wells, court manager for Harris County Courts with the Office of Court Management, explained. “Within I think it was the third day after the real restrictions from the pandemic were put in place in the spring of 2020, we had Zoom rooms set up for each of our county courts and justice courts and just a few days after that had a livestream set up.”