InfoWorld Magazine
7/13/1998

The Wired People's Court
By Alan Radding

InfoWorld Magazine

Lawyers are lining up with their laptop computers to get into Judge Hilton Fuller's courtroom. The large courtroom in DeKalb County Superior Court, Atlanta, Ga., has been retrofitted with the latest computer display technology, enabling everything from PowerPoint screens to video images to pop-ups on LCD screens in the jury box, the judge's bench and the counsel tables.

"The attorneys come in with their laptops and plug right into the system. They are dying to use it, "says Lori Surmay, staff attorney for Judge Fuller. In the past, when lawyers had photos or exhibits as evidence, they used to pass them around to the jury and other appropriate courtroom personnel, but that took too much time. To speed things up, the lawyers enlarged each photo and mounted them on display boards. In a trial with a large number of graphics to display, the cost of enlarging and mounting quickly added up, Surmay points out. It is not unusual during the course of a trial to display video footage, X-rays, DNA prints and fingerprints.

DeKalb County’s new system, developed by ExhibitOne Corp., Gilbert, Arizona, eliminates the need to pass around photos or enlarge exhibits. Instead, it puts state-of-the-art 14" LCD displays in the jury box [one display for every two jurors], on each counsel table and on the Judge’s bench. In Fuller’s courtroom, that amounts to 10 LCD displays. Only the witness box still uses a conventional CRT because it can better accommodate the use of light pens. The LCD displays can rotate between horizontal and vertical positions, depending upon the orientation of the material.

The biggest advantage from the display system comes when witnesses have to point to things in the various photos or graphics. For example, a witness, say a police officer, might have to locate where the body was found on a floor plan. In the past, the witness would have to leave the witness box, go to a central display, make his or her point, and return to the witness box. The process added several minutes to the trial each time a witness had to get up. With the display system, the process can be shortened to 30 seconds or less, estimates Surmay.

And the minutes add up fast. "In a complex trial, like one we recently had where there were 14,000 documents, the display system would have saved an entire week of trial time," Surmay calculates.

The LCD monitors were chosen for their space-saving capabilities. Like the majority of courtrooms around the country, Fuller's courtroom was built before the wide-spread use of technology. "In many cases, we are retrofitting a 1950s courtroom, which was never designed for technology," notes Kevin Sandler, president, ExhibitOne.

In Fuller's courtroom, the jury box in particular is cramped. With one LCD 14" display for every two jurors, "no juror is more than a foot away from the screen," says Surmay. The display at the end of the row swivels to accommodate a juror in a wheelchair.

While users are turning up their noses at 14" displays in the desktop CRT world in favor of larger displays, the 14" LCD displays works fine in the courtroom, even for complex graphics and images. "The clarity is unbelievable," exclaims Surmay, who would gladly trade the CRT on her desk for one.

The LCD displays represented the largest single cost component of the system when it was installed earlier this year. At that time, the 14" LCD cost about $1,800. Since then, LCD costs have dropped considerably. The LCD displays for the courtroom Sandler does will only cost $1,000 to $1,200, he estimates.

The benefits of the display system are quickly becoming apparent: quicker trials, more accurate presentation of complex information and more efficient flow. But Surmay uses another measurement to gauge acceptance of the new technology. Judging from the upsurge in lawyers suddenly bringing laptop computers into Judge Fuller’s courtroom, she declares the LCD display system a success.