Open The Courts

For now, the best way for New Mexicans to obtain state public court documents is by hauling themselves to the local district court and going through the files at one of the court's computers.

Lawyers practicing in this state, however, have exclusive access to an online database allowing them to look up and print state court documents from the comfort of their office or home. The greater public, who pay for the courts to operate through taxes, aren't as lucky.

But that's all going to change soon, says Artie Pepin, director of the state's Administrative Office of the Courts.

"Public access is something we feel is intrinsic," he says.

In the coming months, Pepin's office plans to unroll a database that will allow people to access state public court documents online. The current database that state attorneys have access too, called Odyssey, is run by Tyler Technologies. It allows attorneys to file legal motions online.

The Odyssey database has remained limited, Pepin says, because it contains information that's not public such as clients' personal information.

The Office of the Courts held a public forum on the issue earlier this year to talk about "what the public would want to see" in such a database that could be provided online. The discussion prompted the office to tell Tyler to create an online document database for the public.

Pepin says it will likely resemble the PACER database for federal court records, which is provided online and charges members a fee for each document they view. At the local courts, members of the public can view documents for free but must pay a printing cost if they want a copy provided to them (or they can snap photos of the documents on the computer).

Though the public online court database was originally scheduled to launch this fall, Pepin says it will likely be delayed for a few months.

"We will certainly do this in 2015," he says.

In the meantime, people will have to make do with either going to the court for documents or simply reviewing the dockets for local cases at nmcourts.gov.

Santa Fe Reporter