Sixth Judicial Circuit Uses Its Homepage and Facebook to Inform and Update the Public

Well before the Florida Supreme Court began issuing administrative orders as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our chief judge, Anthony Rondolino, and our trial court administrator, Gay Inskeep, thought it would be a good idea if the Sixth Judicial Circuit posted on the homepage of its website and on its Facebook page general information as to what preventative steps our employees, fellow stakeholders, and members of the public could take to avoid contracting the coronavirus.  We used a graphic used by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  Those posts were on March 4.

Bond hearings are among those the Florida Supreme Court considers mission-critical, meaning they must continue during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Pictured here, Judge Nancy Moate Ley considers reducing bond at a hearing in her courtroom at the County Justice Center in Clearwater.  Anthony Carlow, assistant state attorney, is in the foreground, and the defense attorney, Bridgette M. Domingos, is participating via teleconference; the defendant is listening from the Pinellas County Jail via videoconference.

On March 13, our chief judge instructed the clerks in Pinellas and Pasco counties, the two the circuit comprises, not to call any jurors the following week, and his instruction came just hours before the Florida Supreme Court pretty much accomplished the same thing in one of the first administrative orders it issued to ensure no one involved with the judicial system was put at risk during the pandemic.  Judge Rondolino’s email to all the judges and staff on March 13 was so informative and thorough that it was decided we should post it in its entirety on Facebook and on our website’s homepage. 

On this date, we also began what would turn out to be a custom.  Whenever the Florida Supreme Court issued an administrative order, we synopsized it in laymen’s terms (as best we could, and usually on the same day the supreme court issued the order) and posted what we wrote on our website and Facebook page, providing a link to the orders themselves.  Chief Judge Rondolino did not issue any circuit-wide administrative orders regarding COVID-19 except for one involving the arrest on a misdemeanor charge of anyone violating a coronavirus quarantine.  Other than that, he opted to use the Florida Supreme Court administrative orders as the sole guide, and he has had the circuit follow those orders closely.  We opted not to synopsize and post some of the orders because they did not affect members of the public, but instead affected subgroups in the judicial system, such as members of The Florida Bar, mediators, and interpreters.  What we wanted was to have the most up-to-date information affecting the public in a post at the top of our homepage and in one of the more recent posts on our Facebook page.

Judge Jack Helinger listens to a woman seeking a domestic violence injunction against her husband during the first mass hearing docket of its kind at the County Justice Center in Clearwater on April 6, 2020.  Because the justice center contains the largest courtroom in the county and, as such, is best suited for maintaining social distancing, all petitions for violence injunctions filed in Pinellas County are heard there.

From mid-March on, we used our homepage and Facebook page to let the public know what changes we were making to administer justice while continuing to keep people safe.  For instance, we let those involved in violence injunction proceedings in Pinellas County know that, as of April 6, all injunction hearings would be held in the largest courtroom in the county, at our County Justice Center in Clearwater, to make social distancing easier (previously, some had been held at other courthouses in the county).  Another example was a Facebook post on our new use of the videoconferencing tool, Zoom.

But we also used our Facebook page for a different purpose, to let people know that, despite the belief by some that courthouses were completely closed, judges continued to preside over so-called mission-critical hearings, such as those involving violence injunctions.   One Facebook post addressed advisories, and another addressed bond reductions.  For these two posts, we included several photographs of the proceedings.  The prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judge were in the courtroom, with the defendant appearing via video monitor from the jail.

Judge Frederick L. Pollack, who serves in the family division, conducts a hearing using Zoom.  The first judge in the Sixth Judicial Circuit to use Zoom for court proceedings, Judge Pollack was part of a pilot program that the circuit’s Court Technology Office set up to see what issues might arise when judges began using the videoconferencing tool en masse.

Once the circuit started shifting to remote proceedings, either through teleconferencing or Zoom, we had to change gears to capture the essence of what was occurring.  A simple photograph of a judge sitting on the bench listening to a group of people taking turns talking on the phone would not do the trick.  So we started videotaping brief segments of hearings and posting the video with some text on Facebook.  Videos taken included a juvenile restitution hearing in Dade City, in Pasco County; a detention hearing in Pinellas County; and a risk protection order hearing in Pinellas County.  And then, as other judges, ones involved in the so-called non-mission-critical divisions such as adult drug court and traffic court, resumed hearings, often remotely, we took video of those and posted them as well. 

The circuit made many efforts to keep the number of people coming to our courthouses to a bare minimum, some of which go unmentioned here, and to give the public a chance to see that justice was being done during the pandemic.  We continue working to keep the public informed and updated as quickly as we can.   

(Special thanks to Stephen Thompson, public information officer)