A limited number of jury trials will resume in Massachusetts beginning Oct. 23, according to a Supreme Judicial Court press release.
State courts will begin Phase 1 of their reopening plan and address non-emergency matters for the first time since March.
The in-person trials will take place at select locations with six jurors, and no more than one trial will be heard at a time at each courthouse.
The chief justice of the relevant Trial Court department, with input from the chief justice of the Trial Court, will decide which cases will be tried before juries, according to the SJC.
Deb Silva, executive director of the Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, said the state’s judicial system has adapted to the difficulties of the pandemic fairly well.
“So many institutions, they’re doing the best that they can under the circumstances,” Silva said. “They had to adapt really quickly to using all kinds of remote tools that, in many cases, they had little to no experience with.”
Silva said it’s important to resume in-person functions at courthouses because they are a necessary aspect of the judicial system. Delaying reopening presents other issues such as witnesses forgetting details in cases or defendants being held for too long a period, she added.
“I am hopeful that remote technologies can be used to help expand access to the courts, even post-pandemic,” Silva said. “But for certain kinds of criminal and other complicated cases, there’s nothing like being in person.”
In terms of safety, Silva said that the courts’ phased-in approach is a good start. Silva said that if other places like grocery stores and restaurants can open, then courts should be able to as well.
“Given the safety precautions that are being taken,” Silva said, “I don’t think it’s any less safe than some of these less important activities that have already begun happening.”
Though the courthouses to be used have not yet been announced, Silva said she expects the state to select newer courthouses with better ventilation systems in the interest of safety.
Jennifer Sunderland, a criminal defense lawyer and owner of firm Sunderland Fleming LLC, said it is important to resume in-person criminal defense trials, since certain federal and state constitutional rights require in-person juries.
“As a criminal defendant, you have a right to confront the witnesses against you,” Sunderland said. “Under the Massachusetts State Constitution, confront means face-to-face confrontation.”
Because of this, Sunderland said, certain trials will have to take place before a jury.
“They’ve answered the question of whether it can be done by video,” Sunderland said. “The answer is generally no.”
From what she has seen, Sunderland said state courts have not been able to adapt well to the pandemic because of a lack of resources to enable remote work. Whereas the federal courts had remote-hearing capabilities in place before March, the state courts had to make the switch abruptly.
“The state court system has had to respond in a spontaneous way, and I don’t think that they had any infrastructure to do things over video or by phone,” Sunderland said. “Or, if they did, it was much more limited than what they’re doing now, which is virtually everything.”
In regard to the safety of reopening, Sunderland said it will inevitably be a trial-and-error process. However, she personally doesn’t feel unsafe attending court.
Sunderland said she is “hopeful” knowing that courts are trying to resume in-person jury trials, as the backlog of cases that need to go to trial will continue to increase if they don’t.
At the same time, Sunderland said the measures taken by the state have been effective and should continue to be enforced.
“Even though as a criminal defense lawyer I have significant concerns about the delay,” Sunderland said, “I can also appreciate the reality that we can’t, tomorrow, resume business as usual and have 85 potential jurors sit in a courtroom to be selected for a 12-person jury.”
