Judicial emergency order extended
Look for the courts to remain closed through mid-June as Georgia’s Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court extended the judicial emergency order due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest order pushes back the opening of courts to after a Friday, June 12 deadline after the first order came down in mid-March, and then was extended to mid-May in early April.
Chief Justice Harold Melton’s order did cite the on-going work of court personnel across the state to keep business going via hearings held over video conference, online filings and limited access to facilities through windows, like the Superior Court Clerk’s Office at Courthouse No. 1 has undertaken over the past months.
The order does recognize that “most court facilities are not prepared to comply with social distancing and other public health requirements to safeguard the health of litigants, lawyers, judges, court personnel, and the public during extensive in-court proceedings or proceedings involving a large number of people.”
Chief Justice Melton’s order did provide some additional guidance on how the courts are supposed to handle filing deadlines, statute of limitations, time limits defined by the court and continued authority of grand juries impaneled prior to the issuance of the orders.
The order does allow previously impaneled grand juries to handle time sensitive matters, but that won’t apply to Polk County where a new grand jury was set to begin work in midMarch. District Attorney Jack Browning said that will likely begin after the order expires in mid-June if emergency orders aren’t further extended.
With the extension, Chief Justice Melton did encourage and express the need for courts to continue to use technology to hold remote proceedings whenever possible to ensure that business can continue as much as possible and prevent a backlog once the judicial emergency is lifted.
A judicial COVID-19 Task Force was also established in the order to determine how to restore more in-court proceedings, and also gave some discretion to local courts to reimpose deadlines on cases.