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U.S. District Court for Maryland Starts E-Filing Criminal Cases Today
The court reports: Electronic Filing in Criminal Cases is here -- Beginning August 8, 2008, documents in criminal cases will be filed electronically. Click HERE to link to the Criminal Procedures Manual. Click HERE to sign up for training.

Mddailyrecord.com reports: Nearly five and a half years after Maryland?s federal court became one of the first in the nation to require electronic filing for civil cases, today it will become one of the last to extend that policy to criminal cases.

Documents will be filed through the PACER system, accessible from the U.S. District Court?s Web site. Since its March 2003 introduction in Maryland, PACER has contained docket entries for criminal cases but very few documents could be viewed online.

To address the security concerns expressed by defense attorneys, some documents, such as a witness cooperation agreement, will remain sealed. Access to documents containing sensitive financial information will not be accessible online even if they are not sealed.

In addition, upon request, certain docket entries can be sealed and entire cases can be exempt from e-filing, according to the court?s attorney manual on the subject.

Attorneys must still serve paper copies of any sealed documents and any documents at all upon pro se litigants. The court also will require paper copies of documents longer than 15 pages.

While the change will certainly come with a learning curve, court clerks believe it will make filing cheaper and more convenient and make the filed documents easier to access.

Full post as published by Legal Dockets Online on August 08, 2008 (boomark / email).