Thanks to hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding, Park County’s courtrooms recently got a substantial technology upgrade.

Between new TV screens, microphones, video and audio equipment, the four district and circuit courtrooms in Powell and Cody now offer a better experience for attorneys, plaintiffs, defendants, jurors, spectators and anyone else at a hearing, whether they’re participating remotely or in person.

The $443,986.73 worth of upgrades were paid for with federal COVID-19 relief funds, intended to help Wyoming’s courts operate remotely. However, the benefits from the new equipment should last well beyond the end of the pandemic.

For instance, even when life returns to “normal,” Circuit Court Judge Bruce Waters currently plans to continue using the virtual format for routine proceedings.

Attorneys could request in-person hearings when needed, Waters recently said of his post-pandemic thinking, “but the vast majority of the cases, I think we can do them by video.”

When COVID-19 first became a concern last year and courtrooms went virtual, Judge Waters was initially skeptical of the remote format. But his views have evolved as he’s seen some of the advantages — including the potential for significant cost savings for both attorneys and parties. It’s also reduced the need to transport inmates back and forth.

Waters, who’s held a mixture of in-person and wholly remote hearings over the past 10 months, needed the remote access when he fell ill with COVID-19 in November. And it kept him from missing a beat.

While the judge did have to make some late-night trips to the empty courthouse to sign documents, “I was able to hold hearings from my house over the laptop while I was sick,” Waters said, adding, “it worked out pretty well.”

District Court Judge Bill Simpson — who has not held any in-person hearings since mid-March — says his preference is to eventually return to an open courtroom. But in the meantime, he said, the remote format seems to be working pretty well.

“We have asked, we’ve asked attorneys, and we’ve asked their clients and we’ve asked the public: Are you OK with us continuing to conduct these proceedings in this manner, given this uncertainty?” Simpson said recently. “And by and large, the majority of individuals have said, ‘Yes, we’re fine with it.’”

The new technology installed in November, meanwhile, has made the experience an easier one.

Remaking the ‘Wild West’

It was in June that Wyoming Supreme Court officials learned they’d be getting millions of dollars from the state’s share of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding, and they began upgrading video and audio systems in courtrooms across the state.

With the state then facing a Dec. 31 deadline to spend the federal dollars, and each of the 65 courtrooms taking an average of four to five days to upgrade, court officials found themselves in an “incredible” time crunch, said Nate Goddard.

The IT operations manager for the Administrative Office of the Courts, Goddard said a couple additional Wyoming courtrooms could have benefitted from some upgrades. However, “we just don’t have time to do it,” he said last month, as work was winding down.

A Salt Lake City-based company, Absolute! Audio Visual, had previously surveyed the technology present in courtrooms across the state and upgraded equipment in some places. Because the firm knew what the Supreme Court was looking for, had a master service agreement and pricing already in place, they were hired for the job, at an estimated cost of $8.5 million.

“Had we had to go out and find another vendor, I would be hard pressed to think we would have even gotten this project off the ground,” Goddard said.

Absolute! Audio Visual got to work in early July and continued working right through the latter part of December; that included a stop in Park County in November, where the company made over the Circuit Courtroom at the Park County Annex in Powell, along with the two District Courtrooms and the Circuit Courtroom at the Park County Courthouse in Cody. The work also added some new Microsoft Surface Hubs to the courtrooms — digital whiteboards that can display images and host video conferences.

As systems were upgraded around the state, they were also made uniform from a hodgepodge of different equipment.

“It was kind of like the Wild West, I guess, for lack of a better term,” said Goddard. In the past, attorneys traveling from one courtroom to another might have had to get up to speed on a whole new system, he said.

Ultimately, the upgrades across the state cost just over $5.7 million, Goddard said — or about $2.8 million less than initially quoted.

Absolute! Audio Visual had previously rated each courtroom’s technology on a scale of zero to 10, scoring most of them as twos, threes and fours, Goddard said. Now, he said, they all rate at about 9.5.

Multiple benefits

One of the results of the upgrades is greatly improved sound quality for those calling in for hearings, making it easier for people in and out of the courtroom to hear one another. The system can also easily accommodate larger numbers of remote participants.

Meanwhile, large new screens will make it easier for jurors and courtroom spectators to see photographs, dashcam or bodycam footage and other visual evidence presented in court. Under the old setup, showing dashcam footage at a bench trial literally involved everyone crowding around the bench behind Judge Waters — or required attorneys to bring in their own screens.

“We had a lot of trouble that way,” Waters said.

Other equipment will make it considerably easier for attorneys and the judge to communicate outside the earshot of jurors, while also offering a much better recording of those sidebar conversations.

There’s also a new ability for judges to broadcast their hearings online with just the click of a button; it’s up to judges to decide whether they want to livestream the audio.

Judge Waters said he doesn’t intend to use the system on a regular basis, “but if somebody asks and wants it, and there’s a reason for it, I don’t have any reason for not doing it.”

Both he and Simpson noted that citizens can call their offices, request a phone number for remote access and listen in. Simpson, however, is still interested in the potential offered by the broadcasting.

“It would be much easier and I think kind of fulfill the mission of an open courtroom to have live streaming,” Simpson said.

Saving time and money

The two Park County judges say local attorneys have generally welcomed the convenience of remotely attending court hearings.

“It’s a lot more convenient for a lot of folks,” Waters said, noting the virtual option has made it easier for some defendants to make court appearances.

It’s also saving the state a lot of money, the judge said, as it’s reduced the amount of time and mileage that public defenders are getting paid to travel from one courtroom to another.

“Before, they’d have to go for hearings in Basin and run down to Thermopolis and then maybe run up to Lovell and then maybe run back over to here [in Cody],” Waters said. Now, he said, attorneys can attend a series of hearings across the Big Horn Basin without leaving their offices.

That should also free up more time for attorneys to spend on cases.

“In this way, honestly, an attorney can concentrate on the client, visit with the client, spend time with the client and then just take the hearing, which might take a half-hour — as opposed to a combined hour-and-a-half to two hours, if you factor in travel,” said Judge Simpson, a former public defender. “So it’s much more efficient.”

He also sees advantages for calling expert witnesses, who often have busy schedules and can sometimes hail from out-of-state. Instead of taking a day of travel time to get a witness to a trial, it might only take the expert 15 minutes.

However, despite the advantages offered by remote proceedings, Judge Simpson is still looking forward to returning to traditional hearings.

“We just wish that we could hold court again, as we’re traditionally used to,” he said. “But this is what we’re dealing with.”