Recently, on our blog about courthouses, I posted an item on the Townsend Justice Center, which is the courthouse for Natrona County Wyoming. In that photo I posted a picture of a circuit court courtroom.
I should note that the circuit court is much, much, smaller than the district court courtrooms in the same courthouse. As I'm set to be a little critical of those courtrooms, I want to make that plain. The district court courtrooms are much larger.
Anyhow, one of the recent features of public buildings has been the incorporation of a lot of new technology into them. I'm not wholly opposed to this, and regard it as inevitable, but one thing that I think people really need to keep in mind about this is that certain types of public buildings reflect design lessons learned over centuries, to address their specific functions, and incorporation of technology that's only a couple of decades old, or maybe even less than that, isn't necessarily going to improve their function or even really work very well.
The Niobrara County Courthouse in Lusk Wyoming. This old courthouse has one large courtroom, typical of older courthouses. While heating and air conditioning were lacking in effectiveness the last time I was in the courthouse, the big courtroom does nicely accommodate projected voices. The thread on this blog from 2009 featuring this courthouse remains a freakishly popular one here.
To start with, I'll note audio systems. This is a routine feature of almost any modern building where a person is expected to give an address of any kind, but by the same token almost any building built prior to the mid 20th Century lacked one. If a building was expected to have public speakers, such as a church or a courtroom, it was built accordingly, and that worked just fine.
Churches are a particularly good example of this, as some churches, including very old churches, are huge. The person at the ambo had to be able to address the person in the back as effectively as the front, and without yelling. While some no doubt had problems doing that, most didn't, and that's simply because people in that role learned how to project their voices, and were aided in that by the architecture of the building's interior.
Interior of the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe in Dallas Texas. Built in 1902, this church has classic architecture which wold have allowed voices to carry to the back of the church quite easily.
Courtrooms worked the same way, although the lawyer and court didn't really have to address the entire audience in the gallery, except during voir dire, but just the jury. Still, they had to do that, and learned how to speak effectively in order to do so.
All of this is still true, but now audio systems have been incorporated to achieve that. The problem is that they aren't really always needed, and when incorporated into older buildings you get weird results on occasion, such as cutting in and out, voices that are way too loud, or distortion. Still, people have become so used to the systems they never simply dispense with them, but endure the glitches and press on.
Audio is one thing, but a bigger thing is becoming the incorporation of computer and visual systems. People can be absolutely fascinated with them. So we now see buildings with all sort of projectors, monitors, and the like.
One of the most distracting examples of this I've seen was in a church in Ft. Collins, Colorado, in which some sort of projector was used to flash poorly drawn images apparently depicting the gospels being read as part of the readings for that Sunday. It was distracting, and not really well done. The building itself was fairly poorly constructed for public address at that.
But its in courtrooms where this has become really pronounced, and not really to uniformly good results.
The courtrooms of Wyoming's Seventh Judicial District are a good example. From some point in the 1930s, up until relatively recently, district courts used a Depression Era courthouse. That building featured a very large single courtroom, if a very tiny axillary courtroom is not considered. Over time, however, the existing makeup of the court became simply too small, as with three district court judges, and one courtroom, something was clearly needed. The original purpose was to remodel the beautiful 1930s vintage courthouse, but a bond measure to do that was defeated. So in the end the State ended up funding the remodeling of the old Townsend Hotel across the street from the old courthouse.
The Depression Era Natrona County Courthouse, now no longer used for court purposes.
The Townsend Hotel had been unoccupied for a couple of decades at the time, and something really needed to be done. The remodel is really something, and the entire facility is very impressive inside, even if the outside looks a lot like a 1920s vintage hotel. But the courtrooms in it drive me nuts.
The Townsend Justice Center, the remodeled Townsend Hotel.
The courtrooms themselves are beautiful really. Not as pretty as the old big courtroom in the old courthouse, but still, they're really nice. Nobody could rationally complain about their appearance. But up in front of the bar, they're uncomfortable.
The problem is that they've been wired to the nth degree for every sort of electronic device going. Each juror has their own television monitor, a huge television monitor hangs from the ceiling. All the counsel tables are wired so that counsel can plug his computer in and run the monitors.
That all sounds great, but what that means is that tables are fixed in place. And not only are they fixed in place, they're small. In contrast, counsel tables in older courtrooms are capable of being moved, and are also gigantic as a rule.
That may sound minor, but its not. In a typical multi day trial, its impossible in some modern courtrooms to effectively seat more than one attorney, or an attorney and a paralegal, and the client. No small matter. And in any multi day trial, no matter how high tech the lawyers may be, there are boxes and boxes of material that must go somewhere, and hard paper exhibits. Without the ability to move tables, join tables, and rearrange, the ability to actually operate in the courtroom is impaired.
Circuit (not District) courtroom in the Seventh Judicial District.
It is the case, undoubtedly, that the ability to present a case electronically can really enhance a presentation, but it can distract also. In almost every instance of extensive courtroom technology being used for a presentation that I've seen, somebody screwed it up. I've seen family photos presented for evidence, and a lawyer sort through photos that included some that were somewhat questionable in nature (good thing to keep off your legal computer, I'd think), and a person have to go back and forth and back and forth. And I've also found that a fair number of attorneys who are really comfortable with electronics are no longer comfortable with the court's electronics, so they pack in their own, adding to the enormous assortment of stuff in the courtroom.
None of this is to suggest that this should all be ripped out of the courtroom, and even if I argued for that, it wouldn't happen anyhow. But, rather, a person needs to be careful. Electronics aren't the end all and be all of presentation, and to some degree their diminishing the ability to effectively present in some circumstances, while greatly enhancing it in others. It's one more tool. But when things are built to accept the new tools, perhaps the reason for the old construction should be carefully recalled at the same time.
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