WASHINGTON, March 13 (UPI) -- The Judicial Conference of the United States Wednesday approved a pilot program that will allow Internet access to some high-profile criminal case documents.
The conference is the principal policy-making body for the federal courts and held its semi-annual meeting Wednesday at the Supreme Court in Washington.
The last conference meeting was somewhat abbreviated -- it had barely convened in the Supreme Court on Sept. 11 when Capitol Hill was evacuated following the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
However, the conference did vote last September to make most civil and bankruptcy case documents available online, at least to the same extent they are available in courthouses.
"We're trying our best from the standpoint of protecting protectable interests," said U.S. District Judge Charles Haden II, noting that what is kept private on paper will be kept private online.
Haden, who holds court in Charleston, W.Va., is a member of the conference and briefed reporters after Wednesday's meeting.
Also in September, the conference voted to prohibit online access to criminal case documents, but with the understanding that the policy would be reviewed within two years.
Wednesday's turnaround was driven by the high public and media interest in the case documents involving Zacarias Moussaoui, who is scheduled to be tried this fall in Alexandria, Va., on conspiracy charges.
Moussaoui, a French national of Algerian heritage, is alleged to have participated in the conspiracy that led to the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. District Court in Alexandria, with conference permission, allowed online access to documents in his case on an interim basis.
Moussaoui is the only person to have been charged directly in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Judicial Conference adopted a recommendation from its Committee on Court Administration and Case Management to allow a pilot program for Internet access to criminal case files, and delegated to the committee the selection of cases for the program.
The program should be applied "where it's determined that there is an incredible demand" for documents, "where the electronic access is the best way to go" and when the judge and all parties involved agree to it, Haden said.
The Judicial Conference is led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and composed of the chief judges of the 13 U.S. courts of appeals, a district judge from each of the 12 geographic circuits and the chief judge of the Court of International Trade.
Also Wednesday, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts issued its statistics for the last fiscal year.
Filings in the federal appeals courts set a new record for the sixth straight year -- up 5 percent to 57,464. That included an increase of 5 percent in criminal appeals.
The growth in criminal appeals was driven by increases in immigration and weapons cases, according to the AO. In fact, the number of immigration-related appeals has risen by 297 percent since 1997.
Civil appeals, which had been declining for two years, rose 1 percent last year. Bankruptcy appeals, which account for less than 2 percent of all appeals, fell for the third consecutive year, dropping 5 percent to their lowest level since 1983.
While bankruptcy appeals dropped, bankruptcy filing rose an unhealthy 14 percent in 2001 to more than 1.4 million nationwide. The increase followed two years of decline.
In 2001, the total number of civil and criminal trials completed in U.S. District Courts fell 8 percent, driven by an 18 percent decrease in civil trials and a 4 percent decrease in criminal trials.
The AO reported that 104,715 persons were under federal court supervision in 2001, a 4 percent increase over fiscal 2000. People serving a term of supervised release -- instead of prison time or following prison time -- made up 65 percent of that number.
