A bill requiring Colorado courts to livestream open criminal court proceedings on Webex or another videoconferencing platform won unanimous approval in the House Judiciary Committee.
A proposed chief justice directive should be revised to allow the livestreaming of criminal trials and evidentiary hearings in Colorado courtrooms and permit virtual access to civil proceedings, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and the state’s news associations urged the Colorado Supreme Court.
Colorado’s judicial branch proposed two new chief justice directives on virtual court proceedings and asked the public to comment on them by mid-March.
Nearly three years after the COVID-19 pandemic forced Colorado courts to fundamentally change how they operate, the judicial branch is developing a policy that could make the livestreaming of court proceedings more commonplace and uniform statewide. Meanwhile, a state legislator said she will introduce a bill to make remote viewing of criminal courts the “default” in Colorado.
Like most other government bodies, special district boards in Colorado have met over Zoom or some other video-conferencing platform during much of the COVID-19 pandemic. But they’ve done so, state lawmakers were told, not knowing for sure whether state law permitted their virtual meetings.
COVID-19 touched nearly every aspect of our lives in 2020 so of course it affected government transparency and public access to courts in Colorado.
With the livestreaming of some criminal trials during the COVID-19 pandemic, should journalists be permitted to record and share the court proceedings they see on their laptops?
