Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Cases kept out of public record

Scores of Pinellas cases have been sealed, some improperly, and officials are reviewing similar actions in Hillsborough and Broward.

By CURTIS KRUEGER, STEVE NOHLGREN, REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published June 16, 2006

More than 200 Pinellas County civil cases have been hidden from the public for years and some of them were improperly sealed by clerks, Court Clerk Ken Burke said Thursday.

In Hillsborough County, sealed court cases are kept off the computerized public docket as if they never existed.

And in Broward County, Attorney General Charlie Crist is investigating a secret docket of sealed court files involving prominent figures, including a former presidential speechwriter, judges and a former elections supervisor.

Now, judges and clerks in all three counties are taking a close look at whether the court system has improperly kept court records from the public.

In some Pinellas cases, clerks sealed court records without a judge's order because they mistakenly thought state law required it.

In others, Broward and Pinellas judges sealed court records that clerks then removed from dockets. To the public, it was as if the records did not exist.

Burke said his staff will review all the relevant cases in Pinellas and he expects to restore to public dockets cases that judges sealed.

He said the procedures the clerks followed have been in place for 25 years.

The Broward investigation began after the Miami Herald reported the existence of a secret docket with more than 100 civil cases.

The newspaper sued and obtained the names of people involved in the lawsuits, but not the outcomes. The parties included Jonathan Hage, a former speechwriter for former President George Bush; a Saudi native who was arrested shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; a former state prosecutor; a former federal prosecutor; and Miriam Oliphant, former Broward elections supervisor.

The Broward court clerk's office has said it removes the record of cases from the public docket only when ordered to do so by judges; the chief judge says clerks may have misinterpreted judicial orders.

In Pinellas, Burke, who has been the clerk of the court since January 2005, said 1,935 cases have been sealed since 2001.

Of those, 1,707 were adoption cases, which state law requires to be closed. Those cases, however, do not appear on a public docket in Pinellas or Hillsborough, unlike other counties.

Of the 228 other civil cases in Pinellas, 185 were related to sexual violence. Of those, Burke said most were improperly closed by clerks without a judge's order. State law requires the names of the victims of certain crimes to be withheld, but that doesn't mean entire files should be sealed without a judicial order, he said.

"We probably have made an error in sealing files which should not have been sealed in that area,'' Burke said.

Burke said similar cases include six name changes, three contract matters, eight declaratory judgments, one neglect case, six simplified divorces and two paternity suits.

He said his staff will review each case and unseal any that were improperly removed from public view.

Ron Stuart, Pinellas court spokesman, said Burke has "acknowledged to us that in the past, a judge's order to seal documents has been interpreted as an instruction to remove it from the docket and it may have happened. But it has never been the court's intent to remove any cases that were not statutorily covered.''

After meeting Thursday with Chief Judge David Demers, Burke said his staff will place all court cases on a public docket unless state law prevents it, or if a judge's order bars it.

Hillsborough officials said they do not use a secret docket. But the county's computerized court docket does not list any cases sealed by a judge.

Deborah Martinez, director of family law for the clerk's office, said six family law cases and 14 civil cases have been sealed or partially sealed since January 2004.

Chief Judge Manuel Menendez Jr. said there was no attempt to hide the information from the public. He blamed the computer system for the problem.

The only way the public can find out about a sealed case is to request a list of all sealed cases, Menendez and Martinez said.

The way Broward has sealed certain divorce cases raises question about whether prominent figures are getting special treatment.

Frank said that's not happening in Hillsborough. "Nobody gets special treatment," she said. "We're not doing that here."

[Last modified June 16, 2006, 10:09:46]