Two courtrooms, one court reporter

[Kyung]

So today wa a fun day in federal court. We had regular motions in one courtroom. In the next courtroom, we had readback for the F-13 trial.

So court starts at 8 a.m. We start a little late. We do a couple of motions. Judge asks if parties are here for motions set at 8:30. No. Recess.

8:30 start. Of course, for some reason, 3/4th of the attorneys decide to show up at 8:31 a.m. So as the judge is calling all the cases, the attorneys are coming and I have no freakin' idea who anyone is. Fun times!!

9:20 rolls around. We've got readback in the other room. Quick. Breakdown, take all my equipment to the other courtroom. Walk into room w/at least ten individual defendants and their attorneys. I had no idea who was who. This was day 45 of trial, and they had been in jury deliberation for a while. The jury needed some tapes played back. More fun!!

Take care of a few more matters. Then breakdown. Go back to the other courtroom. Set up again and take more calendar.

Then we were going to go back into the other courtroom. But the judge took pity on me. So instead of me breaking down and setting up, he just had the defendant come into the courtroom I was in. Whew!!!

Back and forth. Back and forth.

[Kyung]

As the electronic monitor, do you have recording equipment in all five courtrooms, or do you have to break down and set up for each courtroom? So do you not have a court reporter at all?

[Jeannie Wright]

That is a big day! And I can sympathize. In most older courthouses, the judge has his chambers and can have hearings there, so you can shuffle a lot of that there and usually they have assigned courtrooms. Well, in the wake of court security guidelines (and we are going through more at the present, since we are a pilot courthouse), when our courthouse was added onto and upgraded, we no longer have a conference room for that in our chambers and we no longer have an "assigned" courtroom. We have five courtrooms and we "float" courtrooms - I've been in all 5 in one day! And this is all in the name of security and handling of prisoners, etc. Even though I'm the judge's clerk, I also function as his electronic monitor quite often and we also have to break down and set up, etc. It's not easy. Finally, as my judge is the senior judge, we begged him to talk to the district clerk and security so that we wouldn't be wrung out at the end of a day! I understand why you had to do that, but in our case, it's more that the sheriff's dept. is worried about prisoners and the nuts out there.

[Kyung]

Oh, no. I didn't take any of the 45 days of trial. His regular reporters did that. It's a big gang case out here.

Yeah, I guess it is like going into the Judge's chambers except you're going into another courtroom. They had jury box on one side. And they had another box that was similar to the jury box bec. they had so many defendants and attorneys. Each defendant had their own attorney. And I knew none of them. Bleh.

[Anthony D. Frisolone]

F-13, is that some sort of gang? Sounds interesting. And wow 45 days of trial, cool!

[Angie]

OMG! What a day! I work in circuit court and although I've never had to work two courtrooms, I've had to breakdown my machine to go back and forth to my Judge's conference room for hearings that were taking place either over the conference phone or out of the presence of the public and by the end of the day I was exhausted. I'm glad the judge could see the work you were doing and had the them come into the same courtroom you were in. And 45 days of trial, yikes! Did you take all 45 days yourself?