Is Justice by Zoom Justice Denied?: Judicial Stakeholder and Legal Advocate Experiences of Video-Mediated Trial Courts in Washtenaw County

Abstract

Previous research has drawn conflicting conclusions regarding the administrative and adjudicatory benefits and detriments of video-mediated (remote) court proceedings. After the universal adoption of remote court during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly important to resolve this tension. By conducting and qualitatively analyzing interviews with Washtenaw County trial court judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and legal advocates, this study contributes to the growing body of remote court socio-legal scholarship by exploring the administrative and adjudicatory impact of videoconferenced proceedings from the perspectives of Washtenaw County judicial stakeholders, with a non-exclusive focus on domestic violence case proceedings. The research findings suggest that remote court creates favorable administrative efficiencies in the following ways: reduced transportation time and cost, perceptions of higher defendant appearance rates, and enhanced work flexibility for court practitioners. On the other hand, this study suggests that remote proceedings create adjudicatory conditions that negatively affect the administration of justice, namely inadequate technology access and user competency, attorney-client relationship impairment, and a diminished ability for judges, defense attorneys, and prosecutors to evaluate the veracity of court participant testimony. In regards to remote domestic violence proceedings, these findings further observe reduced interpersonal rapport between legal advocates and survivor-complainants, and the proliferation of novel coercion tactics deployed by assailants to discourage survivor-complainant case participation and adjudication. Future research can expand upon this research by engaging with larger interviewee sets and/or interviewing remote court litigants directly. These research limitations, and others, offer an opportunity for future scholarship to establish generalizable findings on remote court's impact as it intersects with the broader population of court practitioners and participants. By exploring the administrative and adjudicatory effects of universal remote court since the COVID-19 pandemic, future research can better delineate and recommend how a post-pandemic criminal legal system should incorporate elements of remote court.

Keywords: remote court, videoconferencing technology, COVID-19 courtroom management, domestic violence case proceedings, procedural justice