Sangamon County is pioneering a way of making court cases more transparent – it's livestreaming hearings on the internet.
"To the best of my knowledge, we are the first county in Illinois to do this," said Circuit Clerk Paul Palazzolo.
Cameras were first allowed in Illinois courtrooms 10 years ago, under an initiative spearheaded by then-Chief Justice Thomas Kilbride. This opened the way for newspapers, television stations and other media organizations to add a visual element to their trial coverage.
But what makes the most recent endeavor different is that the broadcasting is not being done by news media, but by the county itself.
"This is in the spirit of what we had in mind when cameras were brought into the courtroom. You cannot be any more transparent than allowing the public to watch the whole thing," Kilbride said during a Feb. 15 interview.
Earlier this month, Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene Grischow ruled in a lawsuit against more than 140 school districts, Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois State Board of Education, arguing there was no due process in Illinois' statewide mask mandate.
Ultimately, Grischow issued a temporary restraining order effectively stopping school districts from requiring students to mask up unless there is an order from a local health department. Pritzker has filed an appeal.
But before arguments were to begin in January, one issue court officials had to wrestle with was how to provide access to the hearing for all the plaintiffs involved.
"There's over 700 participants in this particular phase," said Brian Aarup, who heads up information technology for the circuit clerk. "And we had talked about it with Judge Grischow at the time, and she had talked about either moving it to Macoupin County or to the (Bank of Springfield) convention center.
"To accommodate the large amount of people that were in the case, it would cost money. That's when we decided that it would probably be best to livestream it and reach as many people as possible involved in the case."
During the six days of hearings, 21-and-a-half hours of the proceedings were livestreamed and viewed 15,200 times.
Palazzolo said this case was a "soft launch" so they did not advertise that it would be livestreamed.
In addition to helping avoid moving the hearing to a larger venue, livestreaming was a means to limit COVID exposure by not having the audience crowd into one or two rooms in the courthouse, Palazzolo said. He added a third reason for livestreaming is to make the court system more transparent and accessible.
Chief Circuit Judge John Madonia added, "I want to say (livestreaming) makes it easier for the public to understand and digest a case. But I think if it's something that's controversial, I don't know if that necessarily applies. Generally, it will allow for the public to better understand how and why decisions are made."
However, due to the controversial nature of the school mask mandate, Madonia said he wasn't sure the transparency of the court proceedings was helpful. "Unfortunately, in this case, I just don't think there's a lot of rational application being applied. People are just too, too bitter about the topic to see the legal process play out."
Palazzolo said he anticipates his office continuing to livestream major cases.
But Madonia said he and other judges will first develop rules for how the technology can be used. Some matters they hope to avoid are broadcasting the identities of sexual assault victims, juvenile defendants and other confidential information. But once safeguards are in place, Madonia sees the technology being used in other major cases.
The livestreaming can be viewed on the Sangamon County Circuit Clerk's webpage. But Aarup said once Judge Grischow made her ruling, she asked that the video link be taken down.
The technology made it easier for area journalists to cover the case remotely, Palazzolo said. He noted that both WICS TV and WMAY radio broadcast the portions of the video recorded by the county.
"Recent hearings in the cases challenging mask and exclusion mandates and vaccine or testing policies spanned over four separate days, for hours on end. Having that recorded for playback ensured quotes were accurate and arguments could be seen and heard by readers of The Center Square," said Greg Bishop, a reporter for The Center Square news service.
Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at [email protected].
