Lost in nearly every public conversation about the criminal justice system is the actual business of ensuring the Constitutional rights of individuals. You can't fix a problem you don't understand, and unless you've actually tried to breathe live into the rights of others, at a podium, in a holding cell, before a judge or jury, you don't understand.
When you enter today's courtroom, you'll find surprises. Judges often conduct matters over a television, with cameras and microphones and recordations that preserve it all. Sometimes, the criminally accused is "present" remotely, over a screen in the courtroom, watching proceedings on a screen of his own while he sits in a cell in a jail.
Such proceedings pose far more concerns for the basic, constitutional rights of the criminally accused than anyone is willing to admit. It's a far cry from "the olden days" when, at least, everyone was in the same room, and a court reporter paid rapt attention to your every word.
The ability to read your client's behavior, as a doctor would a patient, is out the window. So is the notion that anything you say to a client isn't being recorded. Forget about whispering an important point in his ear during proceedings. Forget about the way it was always done, before.
Tele-Justice is the name of this realm of inquiry. It's aim is to expose the variety of constitutional concerns present when all of the parties aren't physically present. Now that our local governments plan on regionalizing our jail populations, more and more courtrooms will use this technology, especially for those unable to post a bond and secure release.
Tele-Justice also serve another purpose: to educate lawyers how to use courtroom technologies in ways that serve their clients' needs and rights. Tens of thousands of hours of video exists - every minute a public record - in which I stand in court, advising and defending people against criminal charges. Perhaps many lawyering lessons exist in that record, amid my successes, mistakes and failures would serve the next generation of lawyers sworn to serve the Constitution as I have.
Tele-Justice also points out the many benefits of using such technologies, to courts, police, jailers, victims, and, yes, defendants. Such technologies must be used wisely, without corrupt influence or malice aforethought toward the rights of the criminally accused.
