Online Plea Agreeements Ready, Set Go

Lawyers who are members of the United States District Courts received an electronic notice this morning that tomorrow is the date Chief Judge Moreno's order placing plea agreements back on line becomes effective. Not like we are all going to be running to see copies of every one of them, but I think it will be very useful to insure a degree of uniformity in sentencing, no? Won't it also lend to transparency in government? I think the Chief should be saluted for doing this. I don't see a lot of prosecutors as happy. What is your take?

Here is what the email read. I see the South Florida Lawyers blog is picking up for David Markus while Markus is in trial. He picked it up also.

Administrative Order 2009-2, effective February 20, 2009, provides in part:ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that as of February 20, 2009, the Southern District of Florida's current policy of providing limited electronic access to plea agreements is rescinded. All plea agreements filed on or after February 20, 2009 will be public documents, with full remote access available to all members of the public and the bar, unless the Court has entered an Order in advance directing the sealing or otherwise restricting a plea agreement.Please visit the Southern District of Florida web page at http://www.flsd.uscourts.gov for the full text of Administrative Order 2009-2.

This is what we wrote on January 29, 2009....and one of the things I am going to have to do better is keep a better listing by labels of all the topics I am covering. It is like a massive card catalogue, but if you do not do it correctly, then you cannot even go back and find your own articles.
http://browardlawblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/federal-court-plea-agreements-back.html

Federal Court Plea Agreements Back Online

It is now official.
In a total policy reversal, Chief Judge Federico Morneo of the Southern District court in Miami has ordered that plea agreements are public and should be made available over the Internet unless they are otherwise sealed, according to The National Law Journal.

"The sense of the Court is that the public's interest in access must prevail in this instance and that restricting access to all plea agreements is overly broad," Judge Moreno wrote in his order. "Other means are available to the prosecution and defense to insure that the public record does not contain information about cooperation agreements in those instance where the interests of safety or other considerations require different treatment."

Moreno held an en banc hearing to review a 2007 policy ordering the removal of all plea agreements from the federal courts' online filing system, PACER, in an attempt to safeguard defendants who cooperate with the state, The National Law Journal said. That older policy, which is now rescinded, was itself a response to the Justice Department's bid to get the Judicial Conference to order that plea agreements be taken offline nationwide.

Defense attorneys and First Amendment lawyers alike in the Southern District of Florida called for the policy to be overturned, The National Law Journal reports: "Most courts are coming to the view that it doesn't make sense to seal all those records," Tom Julin, a Miami-based First Amendment lawyer, told the paper. "It's very important for someone to see what deals prosecutors are making."

Nothing not to agree with about that, is there? It's not like they are putting porn online. It's just good public policy!