SAN JOSE — The Santa Clara County Superior Court docket will resume regular public entry beginning Monday, about three weeks after officers closed public counters and restricted who may enter South Bay courthouses due to staffing shortages pushed by the omicron variant of COVID-19.
Presiding Choose Theodore Zayner stated in a press release Friday that “with at the moment declining case charges county-wide, the courtroom has additionally seen a discount in worker absences permitting us as soon as once more to offer in-person courthouse entry.”
On Jan. 12, Zayner ordered the closure of clerk’s places of work and different public-facing courtroom sources, and restricted courtroom entry to folks straight concerned courtroom hearings, with a handful of exemptions for courtroom issues that concerned public and private issues of safety akin to domestic-violence restraining orders. It was the third such entry restriction instituted by Santa Clara County courts for the reason that begin of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
COVID-fueled courthouse restrictions have been controversial within the South Bay and all through the area, with attorneys and open-access advocates asserting that they unduly impression low-income folks and other people of colour, who're overrepresented within the courts and county jails, and hurt due course of due to trial delays and different case backlogs.
In San Mateo County, courtroom officers have shifted all civil courtroom hearings to Zoom, and have consolidated preliminary hearings to courtroom services in Redwood Metropolis. Each San Mateo and Contra Costa counties have obtained emergency authorization to postpone jury choice panels and trials that have been set to begin in January by as many as 30 days.
In Alameda County, the courtroom has briefly decreased phone and in-person entry to clerk’s places of work. Officers have additionally obtained authorization to postpone jury trials set to begin in January and to deal with many of the month as a vacation in terms of many courtroom submitting deadlines. The courtroom has additionally revived a controversial emergency order to increase the allowable arraignment deadline for somebody arrested and in jail custody from 48 hours to as many as seven days.
Lots of the COVID-19 courtroom orders have sundown dates that imply they are going to be revisited, and both continued or rescinded, within the subsequent week. Regardless, courtroom officers are pleading with folks to keep away from coming to courtroom if they're unwell, and have pledged to make sure they aren't in authorized hassle by staying dwelling.
“Going ahead, it's completely essential that anybody who's sick shouldn't come to the courtroom. The courtroom will postpone and reschedule courtroom dates, as needed, to accommodate those that are unwell because of COVID-19,” Zayner stated. “Unrepresented people ought to attain out to the courtroom straight, whereas these with attorneys ought to talk with their counsel.”