Computers, judges make system's flaws tough to track

      Taxpayers paid $547,000 for computers and software to track cases in Clark County District Court. They pay $29,000 a year to keep them operating.
      Yet the system does not track how many cases exist, and a function that would have shown how fast judges handle cases has been deliberately turned off.
      These shortcomings limit attempts by the media and the public to monitor Family Court. So does a decision by one Family Court judge to turn off a video camera pointed at his bench. So does a decision by another judge to control public access to her court. Critics suggest all three decisions are political, though judges disagree.
      Some Family Court judges now are pressing the computer operators in the Clark County clerk's office to provide statistics needed to make administrative decisions.
      After the Review-Journal asked in December for statistics about how fast cases move through Family Court, District Court Administrator Chuck Short responded that the Blackstone computer system cannot produce them.
      Courthouse sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that wasn't always the case.
      "Blackstone systems are wonderful machines and, when they first installed one for our court in 1990, it was capable of producing statistics," explained one source. "But some of the judges didn't want it. They said, 'How I handle my caseload is nobody's business.' "
      Those statistics, some have noted, could have come in handy for a challenger running against a judge who took too long to make decisions or didn't handle his or her share of cases.
      Normally, the source explained, Clark County Clerk Loretta Bowman can perform her duties as she sees fit, even if the judges don't agree with her. But the Blackstone system was bought partly with county funds and partly with state funds administered by the judges. Using the threat of a fund cutoff, the judges prevailed and the statistical reporting functions of the system were disabled.
      Myron Leavitt, chief judge of the District Court, said he couldn't confirm that report and didn't know who made the decision or why.
      Short said there are 16,671 Family Court cases recorded as "active" in this system and that 5,000 are 5 years old or older. But, he added, spot-checking some of the 5-year-old cases indicated that "as much as 80 percent" were completely resolved and should have been closed.
      "This isn't all under the control of anybody in the courthouse," Leavitt said. "Sometimes it is the fault of an attorney who is supposed to draft a final order and fails to do so."
      Leavitt said he has lately asked the computer operators to program Blackstone to flag those old and inactive cases and generate notices to attorneys. If nobody speaks up, those cases will be closed, leaving the court with a more accurate figure of how many cases it actually has to manage.
      By the time a Family Court Division was formed in 1993, the decisions about what information would be tracked in the computers had already been made.
      American Bar Association committees studying divorce courts have suggested that no divorce should take more than one year and 98 percent should be disposed of within six months.
      But nobody knows whether the Clark County Family Court comes close.
      Other courts use Blackstone systems to track the time between key case events such as filing a petition for divorce and the first court hearing. But Short said that while this information could be extracted from the Clark County system, the data would be meaningless because reopened cases have been entered as new ones.
      The absence of data has frustrated Family Court's efforts to study its own procedures. Both Judge Terrance Marren, who recently completed two years as presiding judge of Family Court, and Judge Robert Gaston, who succeeded him in the administrative position, said they were unable to get statistics that could have identified bottlenecks in the case flow.
      "If we knew where the cases were getting clogged we could perhaps put some more of the court's resources there," Marren said.
      Outsiders who would like to study the justice system also are out of luck. Barbara Pinkston, who heads Mothers For Justice, said she has asked unsuccessfully for data showing how often the court has awarded custody of children to parents of each sex. She says this data would show gender bias in custody awards.
      Marren wishes the same data were available, because he believes it would show the judges are unbiased.
      Family Court last fall hired Dan Wiley, a consultant and former court administrator who helped redesign courts in Reno and Hawaii, to examine the system here. Wiley expressed the same frustrations as the judges.
      Since then, Marren and Gaston have asked the computer operators to make improvements that would make data about case ages more readily available and more accurate.
      Two other Family Court judges, however, recently took steps that further limit efforts to see how their courts operate.
      Gary Redmon, who was elected to a new seat and joined the court in January, blinded one of the five video cameras that make the permanent record of proceedings in his courtroom.
      After his first day on the bench, Redmon said, he put a lens cap on the camera that points at him.
      "I was nervous and intimidated by it," he said. "Besides, it is sound activated, and even moving papers on the judge's desk moves the camera onto the judge when it should be somewhere else."
      His voice is still captured as he makes rulings, Redmon said. "I don't see why it should make a difference to anybody," he said.
      Most Nevada courts of record, he pointed out, don't have video, and rely entirely on what a court reporter takes down. He said the reporters do a better job but he was told the court didn't have enough money to hire one for him.
      Another Family Court judge, Fran Fine, has hung a sign on her courtroom door advising people to wait until their own cases are called before entering. Lawyers and laymen, interviewed in December outside her courtroom, expected to be chased away by a bailiff if they entered.
      When journalists entered the courtroom anyway, Fine interrupted proceedings to ask why they were present. Those who said they came to observe were permitted to remain. Fine said nobody was ever denied access.
      Some lawyers thought that Fine, who has been criticized in polls of Clark County lawyers for her courtroom behavior, was trying to limit the number of people who saw it. In January she circulated a memo explaining that her real intention was to eliminate the noise of people entering, leaving and talking during proceedings. She said anybody is welcome if they enter between hearings and behave.
      The exception, she said, is when a participant requests a hearing be closed. Because Family Court hearings sometimes involve discussions of sexual conduct or personal finances, Fine said, the law requires her to honor such a request.
      Gaston said that despite any difficulties these policies create in tracking the court's work, all judges produce a lot of it, and they're proud of the amount and quality.
      "We don't claim to be a perfect court," he said. "But I want you to remember that most cases are still completely open. Anybody can read the case records; anybody can go look at the videotapes."
      Even in sealed cases, both documents and videotapes can be examined by participants and others with proper authority, he added. "That taping system makes us one of the most open courts in any state."