The minutes of the November 30, 2001 meeting were approved as written.

Computer Usage Policy for Judicial Officers

Judge Grosse noted that a draft policy had been distributed to the committee as a part of the materials for the meeting for a first reading today. He asked that committee members be prepared to discuss it at the next meeting. He also noted that the committee needs to consider the process for adoption of the policy -- possibly for the JIS Committee to adopt it and then for the Supreme Court to approve.

Vacation of Records of Conviction

This item had been held over from the last meeting in order to give the newspapers an opportunity to comment. Diana Kramer stated that the newspapers' position is that records in court systems should be publicly available. Judge Stilz and Judge Heller reported that, because the criteria are so stringent, there have been few requests for vacation.

The committee discussed how the recommended changes would operate. Cases where a judgment had been vacated would continue to appear on indexes even though they were sealed.

The committee approved a motion adopting the recommendations:

• Modify existing CLJ Vacation of Conviction to include a request to seal the court case records and filings pursuant to GR15.
• Ask the JISAC Committee to prioritize the project to program JIS to respond to sealed vacated conviction cases like sealed juvenile offender cases.
• Until programming changes can be made, when a court enters an order to seal a vacated conviction case, a limited access seal in JIS should be used so certain authorized court staff can access this information.
• Continue current JIS entry practices for vacated convictions.
• Recommend a court rule to the Supreme Court that mirrors the legislative intent of RCW 9.94A.230 and 9.96.060.

Proposed Comprehensive Court Rule

The committee and guests discussed the draft court rule on Public Access to Court Records. The committee requested that staff include all documents in meeting announcements on the Data Dissemination Discussion listserv, which includes the media, commercial users and resellers, etc.

Diana Kramer distributed a marked up copy of the fourth working draft with comments, including many suggested grammatical changes, by the media. Staff will review these comments and make appropriate changes to the language.

The committee discussed the impact of the proposed rule on judges' notes, judges' departmental files, and the like. To make clear that the rule does not cover such materials the committee agreed to add the words "and filed with the court" to the definition of case record. The committee noted that GR 22 should be amended to include the same language.

The committee discussed restricted personal identifiers. Diana Kramer and James Liles stated that they wanted access to telephone numbers. The committee noted the courts' need to obtain phone numbers for purposes such as contacting pro se litigants and collections. Tom Clarke mentioned the need to treat email addresses like telephone numbers. The committee agreed to delete telephone numbers from the definition.

The committee next discussed the question in Paul Sherfey's January 22, 2002 letter concerning the grievance process for sealed documents and restricted access forms (Section 7(c) of the Sixth Working Draft). The committee agreed that this procedure should be a part of GR 15, rather than the new court rule. Sections 7(e) and (f) need to be expanded to cover records "otherwise restricted by statute or court order" (e.g., adoption, mental illness, juvenile dependency, etc.).

The committee then turned to questions about local courts distributing statewide data and the burdens on local courts from requests that require Brio queries. Siri Woods asked if the rule could be written to permit a court to disseminate only information on its own cases. Judge Stilz asked whether the AOC could provide a statewide records check service, charge for it and recoup the costs.

Following this discussion the committee agreed to convene a special meeting in one month to continue work on the rule. AOC staff will schedule that meeting and incorporate changes agreed on into the draft so that it can be available to participants two weeks in advance of the special meeting.

The next meeting will be Friday, February 22, 2002 at 9:00 AM.