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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Contact:
Gail Gosney-Wrede,
Thurston
County
Prosecutor’s Office,
(360) 786-5540 x 6252
gosneyg@co.thurston.wa.us
Public
Comment Sought on
Thurston
County
Grant
Proposal
OLYMPIA
–
Thurston
County
residents are invited to comment on a grant proposal that involves technology enhancements for Thurston County Superior and District courts.
The proposed project is intended
to enhance technology improvements to streamline information flow between
judges, prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys and to reduce court
delays, by developing e-forms for court hearings.
The
goals of Phase III of the Court Delay Reduction Project are to:
1)
Reduce delays and continuances in court proceedings; and
2)
Reduce costs of personnel time used to process paper documents.
Under
the proposal, the goals would be met by:
1) Developing e-forms to be used by
Superior
and District Court for arraignments, preliminary hearings, warrant hearings,
sentencing and other hearings; and by
2) Developing procedures to allow for transmittal of forms
from attorneys to the court and to the clerk’s Office through electronic
transmission.
Currently,
Thurston County Superior and District courts still use paper files and hard
copies of orders to transmit the ruling(s) of the court to the attorneys, the
client, the jail and the Clerk’s Office.
This paper transmission can cause delays in court proceedings, cause
cases to be continued due to lack of relevant orders being available, add
additional costs to court proceedings and require additional inmate
supervision time for jail inmates who may have to attend multiple hearings due
to lack of available information.
This
project, in conjunction with other planned improvements, will decrease the
processing time for court documents, improve the quality of trial
presentations and significantly reduce the number of continuances currently
experienced by courts in
Thurston
County
.
The
entire grant application can be viewed on line at http://www.co.thurston.wa.us/docs/bryne-grant/BRYNE-GRANT-PROGRAM-NARRATIVE.pdf
Comments
on the grant proposal should be directed to Gail Gosney-Wrede of the Thurston
County Prosecutor’s Office at gosneyg@co.thurston.wa.us.
The comment period ends July 2nd.
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