Temperature checks and social distancing are out, but masks remain a requirement as the Santa Barbara County Superior Court this past week took a step toward returning to a pre-pandemic normalcy.
As of Monday, court clerk offices in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Lompoc reopened for the first time in 15 months.
For criminal and traffic matters along with civil and criminal records, the office hours will be 8 a.m. to noon. For civil, family law and small-claims matters, the offices will be open from 9 a.m. to noon. Jury services offices will be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Plans call for expanding the hours at the clerks’ offices, but it could take at least a month.
“It’s tough work to shut a court down, and it’s tough to reopen it all,” Court Executive Officer Darrel Parker said.
The mask requirement remains since court employees have no way to verify whether someone had received a COVID-19 vaccination, with Parker saying it would be too onerous to try to sort out the status of those entering facilities.
“We thought it best to protect all of the occupants to the maximum extent that we could until there’s some lifting of masks entirely,” Parker said.
The requirement also recognizes that people can spend hours inside a courtroom, not just minutes as they would a grocery or home improvement store, Parker added.
Courts have had limited operations since March 2020, with many hearings occurring when defendants and attorneys appear remotely. Approximately a dozen trials have occurred, but most have been stalled because of social distancing rules limiting the number of people in a courtroom.
“We usually do substantially more,” Parker said, adding that 22 of 25 courtrooms across the county can now accommodate a trial.
But the court staff remains wary of the potential for outbreaks in the middle of a trial as the number of people in the facilities increases.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Parker said.
Court staff had scaled back the number of jury summonses because of the limited number of trails taking place in recent months, but have since increased the number with the expectation that rules would be eased and trials could resume.
“We are expecting jurors to show up, and they need to bring a mask,” Parker said. “If somebody doesn’t have a mask, we’ll give them one when they get here, but wearing a mask remains in place at the courts throughout the county.”
Defense attorney Jeff Chambliss said he can tell that the courts have started moving toward normalcy since the pace of work is picking up in his private practice.
“A super interesting issue is, will the role of remote appearances by Zoom continue, and what will that look like as the pandemic eases and the courts reopen?” he said.
Before the pandemic, many defense attorneys expressed skepticism about remote appearances, but they since have changed their stance.
A nonprofit group, California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, has pushed for remote appearances to continue with the consent of the defendant.
“I think that’s a good idea, to be honest with you,” Chambliss said, adding that it should be limited to brief hearings. “My position would be any hearing where there is evidence taken, I want to be there (in person).”
For attorneys like Chambliss who have cases in courtrooms in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, Ventura and even farther away, remote appearances for brief hearings also can save time and mileage.
Parker said remote hearings likely will continue in some fashion.
“I don’t expect that we’ll ever see the video arraignment go away,” he said. “Like anything else, you’ve got to work out the bugs. We did that in a crisis, and now that there’s changing rules, we’ve got to figure out what the latest bugs are.”
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.