 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. Coming up on Court to Court. The biggest surprise has been that it's a lot easier than Ban Cap was. The sooner that you realize I have to take an active part in learning, all I can about CMECF, the better off you're going to be. We can't make someone change. We can only provide the atmosphere for them to change. This is Court to Court. Your connection to what's happening in the federal courts around the country, providing information and ideas that will enhance your job and how the courts function. Now with today's program, Michael Burney. Welcome to Court to Court, the Federal Judicial Center's educational magazine program for all court employees. On today's program, we'll visit two courts that have dealt with staff training for CMECF. We'll return to another moment in court history, and we'll learn how probation officers can make a difference in the lives of offenders whom they supervise. The conversion to CMECF continues in courts across the country. Handling court documents electronically means big changes for most court staff. And as always, one of the best ways to deal with change is training. We visited a district and a bankruptcy court that have recently gone live to learn how they've managed training at the bankruptcy court for the district of Wyoming. Clerk of Court Joyce Harris says that dealing with change often means stress for the staff. I took the position that it was going to be an exciting time. It was going to be fun. And we tried to make the change fun for everybody. Now not everybody bought into the fun, because it was, there was a fear factor that they had to deal with. The change to CMECF for me was a little scary. I felt my job was threatened. I didn't know if they would have a need for people anymore. You can't emphasize enough that the system isn't going to replace what we're doing today. It's just going to change how we do it and the processes we do. And then after things started moving along and CMECF, I realized that there's just more things to do. There's more things to check. It makes people do their job in a different way. My first reaction was, oh, I have to learn something new again. Because when I was hired, we were doing band cap. And I had to learn all of these really funny codes. It was kind of hard, but I did. And then I was going to have to learn something new. And now? I think it's wonderful. Probably the training made the difference. Harris decided it was easier to train in small increments, rather than covering everything in one session. Some of our systems people did the training. Some of the training was done by the project manager. Some of the training was done by the case managers. This morning, I thought we'd go over our case closing events and practice on closing some actual cases now. And it has been a stretch and a good stretch for me as a systems person to learn how the docketing fits into what we're doing. Because I can't really solve any of the problems that have come up for the case managers unless I understand how they do their business and how they dock it. And so communication among all of the people, among your systems people, your chief deputies, your program managers, the docket clerks, everybody to a greater or lesser degree has to be in on this. The court has been imaging documents for several years. Ellis says a clerk's office should start early to ensure that everyone is familiar with a Windows operating system. Learning how to use a browser, the mouse, how to work in the Windows environment because that's new to a lot of the case administrators. And then when it's time for formal CM ECF training? I would suggest that the training not occur until about three months before you went live. In our case I think we were a little bit ahead of that and you start to lose the skills if you haven't put them to use pretty soon. What I will come back with is a listing of cases that CM ECF believes are in a position to close. I think an important point to remember is that most of the people already know the process. It's just how you're applying it. You're applying it to a new system. There are extra steps in doing what you have done before, but it's easier. It might take a little while longer, but there's nothing to be afraid of. The biggest surprise has been that it's a lot easier than Band Cap was. I think it's exciting. You can just point and click, which is very easy. You don't have to memorize anything. It's important when we're training to encourage the staff to always ask questions and not to accept things as they are just because they're there. If they ask the question, there may be another way to do it or it may be a process that we don't need to do anymore. The question is how are we going to discharge? What do we show to discharge? The difficulty of training and keeping up with day-to-day work meant that some staff worked evenings or weekends. I don't think it could have been done a better way. I think everybody realized that we were in training, we had our work to do, and we needed to be trained. Severson says that now the ongoing training is often informal. We'll just meet by the front intake or have a stand-up meeting. We'll talk something over and make a decision, and that will be what we go with. When you get done here, I have a question for you on an order. Okay. We could look at it when you see the Maciel. Okay. It doesn't make any difference if it's just a little tiny item or something great big. I learn something new every day. I think that keeps your mind active and open to learning. Have all of the deputies been trained in how to use the track-it system? The clerk's office plans to train case trustees as the first outside users. Because there are few trustees, Harris and her staff hope to have them come to the Cheyenne office. But they also know that they may need to go to the trustees' offices. Wyoming is a large state. There's a lot of square miles out there. The bar does not have access to the court like they would have in a large city. We're here to serve the bench, the bar and the public, and by doing what we're doing, we're educating them to use the tools that we will have available. We also have a videoconference facility in the court that can tie into our state university system that enables us to reach almost every town in Wyoming. So a mix of all those things, I'm sure, will be used to train the attorneys. The docket clerk, Geraldine Huber, looks forward to trustees and attorneys using CMECF. We will still have a lot of work to do, I'm sure, but that'll be exciting, too, because I like to correct other people's mistakes. I hate to make mistakes of my own and I make plenty of them, but I like to correct other people's. These case administrators have practical advice for other staff as they begin CMECF training. You want to prepare as much as you can, but sometimes you prepare too much and you just need to jump in. Let's pay attention to what you're doing. It's exciting for me, especially, because when I started, we did everything with a mimeograph machine and we didn't have electric typewriters. So to be able to see what we are able to produce and give to the public now is just really overwhelming at times. That sort of enthusiasm is mirrored in the district court for the District of Nebraska. The staff there, too, was somewhat apprehensive about CMECF, and so the individuals responsible for training adopted an attitude that said, we're going to make this fun. The project manager also recommends introducing staff to CMECF prior to formal training. Do little teasers. Have them go through some computer-based training. Give them some challenges. Just get them exposed to the software. To introduce its staff to CMECF, the Nebraska Clerk's Office had them use several training databases and modules. Getting out there and touching it and getting a feel for it, I think you're going to not have as much anxiety on their part because they've seen it now. When it was time for formal training, the Clerk's Office created multiple opportunities so that staff could sign up for days and times that were convenient. When the criminal complaint comes in, the first thing we need to do is open up our magistrate case in CMECF. Using an actual case from the court, training sessions docketed the entire case in CMECF. So everyone got the overall feel of the system, what it was going to be to open a case, how it was going to be to close the case, and I think that made the most sense to people to see that overall picture. The divisional office in Lincoln is 60 miles away, and all eight staff needed CMECF training. Deputy in charge Pat Merritt says, traditionally this presents problems for divisional offices. You have training scheduled, and everybody's involved in electronic case filing, someone has to stay back. So that means no matter what the meeting is or what the training is, one person doesn't attend. You just have to eliminate those boundaries, it just has to be done. So the Clerk's Office provided training in both Omaha and Lincoln, and staff could attend at either location. So this we're opening as a magistrate case, so we're going to do MJ. But geographic logistics were only one headache. You'd be in training all day long, you'd come back from training at four o'clock or something, there would be a huge stack of work left for you to do. And you can't get upset with your coworkers because, guess what, they have a huge stack of work, but they are trying to get done too, because they've been just as busy. Sometimes it's so hard when you see the workload on your desk to think training's not important, especially when ECF might be six months down the road. You just stay a little bit later each night. What we had to do was, you know, ask staff to come in on the weekends and work some overtime. You hate to do that, but we really had to. I was okay with it because I felt like I needed to be in those meetings and I needed to understand what was going on. We want our court to be on the cutting edge, i.e. cutting edge, but not bleeding edge. We were the second to the last to go on ICMS, and I'm very, very proud and thrilled to be the first court that will be going on criminal ECF. Now this is different than in civil. In civil we didn't care, but in criminal it does matter and it's going to make a difference whether or not they get their email notification. All staff volunteered to train attorneys and received special training for that. I initially volunteered to be a trainer because I figured that to be a trainer, I would have to know what I was doing. It's been great. We don't have any more attorneys for the USA. We're done with this, so we're going to go ahead and click the submit button. Because they have some frustrations or they may have some concerns, I think the key to training attorneys is to have some patience and be willing to be a good listener. I love the attorney training aspect. I think it's such a positive experience. I mean, when in ECF, other than ECF, you get to work with attorneys on a new project that your court's undertaking. And it's been a good, marvelous learning experience for me. I've always known we've had a great staff and they're very talented and very hardworking. But what has happened is we've discovered a lot of hidden talent. They're thinking of new processes, writing new procedures, coming up with new ways to do things. And it's really just a different outlook on their jobs. Energy is an interesting thing. It becomes very infectious, but it's got to start at the top. And you start to see that sprinkle through your agency and through the court. When the court went live with CMECF for civil cases, the clerk's office began weekly debriefing meetings, video conferencing with the Lincoln office. Could we compromise, put it in a case folder, but not, but just write the case number on there, would it be more difficult just to put it in a folder, you know, like a criminal folder? And those really are training because all the docket clerks come to the debriefing meetings and any issues that come up we talk about there and we work them through. We have a computer right there. So if somebody has a question about something, we can just go on the computer, show them how it works. We've been opening up the statistical civil cases for 2255 motions on ECF. And there was a little bit of confusion on which remark we should be using, whether it's the remark non-public or the remark public. Everybody gets a chance to talk about those things. And you have a chance to put in your input if you want to put in your input. If we go to the trouble of making these files and putting them in there, they're not going to be complete anyways. And you don't feel like you're sitting on the outside waiting for somebody to come along and tell you, well, we decided this. Well, this is what's going to happen now. You're part of it. You're part of making the decisions. I'm going to go ahead and skip down. They keep detailed minutes for those who can't attend these meetings. The debriefing meetings were something that we started the first week of going live on civil. I know myself, I really thought that they would taper off. And, you know, we've been on this project now three months, and we still meet once a week. And our list constantly has 20 items on it. So they're not going away. Training coordinator Luda Pleiss says that everyone who ever touches a case file needs to know something about CMECF. So that's not only just your docket clerks, but your courtroom deputies. You have people in your admin staff that look up cases from time to time. All of your chamber staff, the marshals office, needs to be able to pull up a case. When you get into the criminal side, you've got your probation and pretrial offices. So just within the court, I'm now training the entire court. Several staff members say that preparing for and implementing CMECF became this whole focus of their jobs. I didn't personally know how much time it was going to take and how much energy it was going to take. But would we do it all over again? Absolutely. It is the future. It's where we need to go. And it's fun being on the cutting edge, even though it requires a lot of time and energy from our staff. Now I think it's great. I think it's required our court to go through and examine the way we do things. It does not take the place of you knowing your job, but it makes knowing your job so much easier. It really does. The sooner that you realize I have to take an active part in learning all I can about CMECF, the better off you're going to be. An example of the payoff came for docketing supervisor Jennifer Stone when she helped chamber staff use CMECF to access the documents in a case that had been transferred from another jurisdiction. That was amazing. And I think that I know why for myself is like, wow, this is really cool. So that was a good thing. Since we taped at the Nebraska court, it is implemented CMECF for criminal cases and reports that the transition went smoothly. Staff training for criminal was well received. And informal training and discussions continue as the court tweaks procedures and its dictionary. The FJC will broadcast an expanded program highlighting the experiences of the Nebraska and Wyoming courts. Check the FJT and Bulletin online for dates and times. In the summer of 1839, the Spanish schooner Amistad accidentally sailed into United States waters. After the ship left Havana, Cuba, enslaved Africans on board revolted, killed the captain, and seized control of the vessel. They attempted to sail back to Africa, but the badly damaged vessel eventually drifted to Long Island Sound, where it was boarded by the crew of a US Navy ship. But that's only the beginning. Here with the rest of the story is my colleague, Bob Fagan. The naval crew took custody of the Amistad, its cargo, and the 42 Africans on board. They towed the ship to New London, Connecticut, a state where slavery was legal, intending to file a salvage claim in the courts. Under the laws of salvage, anyone who rescued a ship from danger was entitled to a portion of the value of the ship and its cargo. The Amistad case entered the federal courts in August of 1839, when district court judge Andrew Judson convened a court of inquiry and heard testimony from the Spanish planters, who claimed to own the Africans, and from Antonio, a slave who was cabin boy for the Amistad's slain captain. Judson held that the case presented both criminal and civil claims. He kept the salvage claim in the district court and referred the criminal case, the revolt and murder at sea, to the circuit court. At that time, federal circuit courts were mainly higher-level trial courts. The Amistad case generated much public interest, both in the captives, who were from the Mendy region of West Africa and in questions of law and jurisdiction. Anti-slavery activists saw the case as an opportunity to build support for the abolition of slavery. These abolitionists formed committees to help the Africans in court. At the circuit court in Hartford, Connecticut in September, Justice Smith Thompson ruled that no federal court had jurisdiction over an act that occurred on a foreign vessel at sea. This ruling eliminated all threat of criminal prosecution of the Africans. Their fate now depended upon their status as property, rather than any accusation of wrongdoing. The trial regarding the salvage claims began in January 1840 in the district court in New Haven. There was no jury, and the case's determination rested solely with Judge Judson. The strategy of the lawyers recruited by the abolitionist committee was to win the court's acknowledgment that slavery violated natural rights, those rights to which every human is entitled, regardless of any nation's laws. They also argued that the Mendes enslavement violated Spain's own laws. The trial reached its dramatic high point when one of the enslaved Africans, who had become known as Cinque, described his capture by slave traders in West Africa and the horrific voyage across the Atlantic in the suffocating hold of a slave ship. After five days of testimony, Judson read his decision. The naval crew was entitled to a salvage award for the ship and its non-human cargo. But he denied a salvage award for rescuing the Africans, because even though slavery was legal in Connecticut, slaves' sales were not. And so the court had no way to determine their monetary worth. Judson also ruled that because there was no proof of ownership, the Mendy were not lawfully held property of the Spanish planters. And finally, he ruled that because Antonio, the cabin boy, was born in Spanish territory as a slave, he was the legal property of the captain and must be delivered to Spanish officials. Judson's decision was appealed to the circuit court, which quickly upheld his rulings in order to speed the certain appeal to the Supreme Court. The case came before the Supreme Court in its January 1841 term. How the court would rule was unpredictable. The court had always protected the property rights of slaveholders at the same time that it enforced restrictions on the slave trade. Former president John Quincy Adams had joined the group of lawyers representing the Mendy. His emotional argument invoked the principle of natural rights as embodied in the Declaration of Independence. On March 9, 1841, the court's senior justice, Joseph Story, delivered his opinion for the majority of the Supreme Court. The district court's ruling that the Mendy were not legally held property was upheld. And the captives were finally given their unconditional freedom. The decision that freed these captives offered no legal relief to the nearly 3 million residents of the United States held in slavery. Nor did it serve as a precedent for legal challenges to slavery. The Supreme Court let stand the district court's ruling that the cabin boy, Antonio, was a slave under Spanish law. But the widely reported proceedings in the federal courts did highlight the fragile legal principles and political compromises supporting slavery. The main impact of the Amistad case was to encourage the growing opposition to slavery in the United States. That's a moment in court history. I'll be back with words to know in the next court to court. Our award-winning half-hour video, Amistad, the Federal Courts and the Challenge to Slavery, is available from our media library at 202-502-4234. There are also materials about the case on our website, which you can download. The video will air on the FJTN in February. You may want to use some or all of these materials in public programs of your own. For any assistance, please call our history office at 202-502-4181. Court staff can have effects large and small on those who come in contact with the courts. While many staff won't have as intense an effect as do probation and pretrial services officers, there are lessons to be learned about dealing with people. At the probation and pretrial services office for the Western District of Wisconsin, they use a map analogy, charting the course, to describe how officers help offenders change their lives. Kent Hansen, chief US probation officer for the Western District of Wisconsin, believes that probation officers have a mission. We're not just trying to see people through a period of supervision. We're trying to interrupt the cycle of dysfunction. Several years ago, when officer Rick Badger supervised Gloria Farr's release on a fraud charge, he discovered that she was a crack cocaine user. His reaction was typical of how he deals with offenders. It's good to see you. You too, Rick. I needed to treat her with dignity and respect. She was already skeptical of the system and a little suspicious. My myth or understanding about the system, they really didn't care. There was a bunch of controlling people so that they would come in and force you to do something. And he was a complete opposite when he came in. So I wanted to try to instill some hope that this does not have to be your life, that you can make some differences and make some choices that can move your life in the direction you want it to go. What he treated me as that I was an individual who made a mistake that I can do better. If you approach the individual from a helping standpoint, your not as apt to run into resistance as trying to invoke power and authority. So if I said I needed help, then he didn't say, well, I'm going to find treatment for you. He said, call and find treatment. So he put the options back in my hand to look for things to seek them out. Having options after prison is a big issue with another former offender, Tony Delier. I don't think that I can stress enough, especially when you first get out how limited your options seem to be. Delier served more than six years in federal prison for distribution of cocaine. I mean, I just had a lot of things going for me. I have computer skills, language skills. It was still hard for me to go out and get a job. If we can't be helpful to persons in making that change, we're not helping them get themselves out of the situation that brought them to prison to the criminal justice system in the first place. Jeanine Frank was Delier's probation officer for about a year and a half of his supervised release. They need support. And from whom are they going to get support, if not the probation officer who's supervising them? And we have to support them in such a way that holds the person accountable and protects the community. Delier is now an attorney, most often representing defendants. I'm really optimistic because they have some new programs here where one of the district attorneys is actually working on mental health issues in the criminal justice system. If you don't immediately start working with people to make sure that they have the options and the vision of the future, that you've put them right in the midst of temptation without giving them the time to have a vision of the future. If I want Tony or other people to succeed, sometimes I may have to go the extra mile to help them do that. Delier says the frequent conversations he and his wife had with Frank are one way she helped him. We weren't talking about what are you doing next week, Tony. We were talking about what are you doing next month, next six months, next year down the road because one of the problems that people have is the same problem I had before. Their horizon is just a couple of months down the road. Well, certainly one of the skills that I think are absolutely necessary is to be an active listener, to be engaged in conversations with people but listening so that you can hear more than just the spoken message. Tell me about the process. Did they just send you a letter of rejection or how did it what happened? No, they never sent me a letter of rejection. They kept sending me letters asking for more information about various things. Attitude also plays a big part in the officer's work. One of the key things is to not be judgmental and it's so easy to just stereotype offenders, especially if they have a long criminal history thinking that, oh boy, here it is. They're not going to change. Yes, people do make mistakes, but they can rectify it if they have the right support behind them. I don't try to ignore the past. We have to deal with the past, but try to give that person a chance to write a new slate, to write a new history. Even when I had relapsed, he gave me an opportunity to seek help. He didn't say, okay, you go straight to jail. He worked with me and so with that, that made me more motivated to seek treatment so I never stopped. We can't make someone change. We can only provide the atmosphere for them to change. We provide guidance, we provide structure so that a person can change. I look at him as a teacher. He put the information out there. He gave me avenues to try, options to look at, and when I messed up, he allowed me to pick it up. He was there to support it, but he allowed me to choose my road. I try to let the people I work with know that I do care about them, that I am involved. I want to see you successful, and hopefully you want to see you successful. We want you to win. We want you to achieve your goals. Everybody wins when you do well. When you do well, you get a chance to be with your children. You get a chance to be productive in society. These officers make a habit of getting as involved as possible in offenders' lives. Your employer, actually talking about what you're trying to do helps you set goals, and she did that pretty regularly, and I can go into court and people just know that I really believe in my clients and I really believe in my point of view, that I'm not just in there saying it because that's what I get paid to do. I think one of the best skills I have is that I listen to people. Because the U.S. Attorney had told me that they'll never consider those state support systems. The secret to listening is to talk less. She helped us by essentially having us explain what's going on and where we're headed. And I don't try to force my ideas and beliefs on people. I try to work with them within the scope of their own belief system. You know, a lot of people say, well, you can't be a lawyer because you were imprisoned. You know, I had this dream, and then, you know, Janine helped me, you know, talk about the steps I had to do to do it so that we could do the things that needed to be done. The officer needs to be a diagnostician. You have to be able to tell at what level the offender is at, what they're ready for, and how best to approach that individual. She really worked with me around final exams times and things like that. You know, she actually scheduled things around my schedule. At the time I was working three jobs and going to law school, that made a difference for me. You have to be willing to try different approaches with people to try to get them where they're at and try to meet them where they're at. Rick brought me out into the community to speak about drugs and to speak about how it could affect your family and children. So he got me involved with outreach in the community with people. Ujima is a counseling service for African-American families in Madison. Far once came here as a client. Now she's the interim director. But now seeing that she is helping other people getting off of crack, I think that's really what this is all about. My goodness, it couldn't ask for a better outcome where she has been able to use her skills for education, her determination. The teacher can put the information out there, but the student will have to pick it up and read it and study it. And the only way they can master it is that they experience it. Officer's involvement in offenders' lives protects the community and helps the offenders. I was able to determine that, in fact he was being law-abiding. And what this allowed me to do was when Tony needed an advocate, I could be that person for him. When he needed some assistance getting into programs at law school, I was able to do that. When he needed to travel out of the country for a class, I was confident in making that request to the judge. One such request to the court involved allowing Tony to go to Mexico for intensive Spanish language courses. And drug dealer going to Mexico that probably doesn't seem intuitively correct to a lot of people in her job, but she talked to the people in various organizations to make sure I wasn't under investigation, that sort of thing. The courses have made a big difference in his law practice because a large number of his clients are persons who speak little or no English. Badger says that the public and the court usually hear only about offenders who violate their supervision. They don't hear about the ones who make it. The ones who, in their quiet way, have made some decisions to change their life and to live a different way and to be a contributor to society. Hanson wants to emphasize a different message. That offenders can change, that there are success story after success story out there nationwide. You know, for somebody like me that's really trying to be successful, it helped a lot to have an agent that wanted me to be successful and was willing to actually do some extra work to do it. I shouldn't be in this job if I don't believe people can change. There'd be no need for, I'd just be taking up space. That's our program for today. We want to hear your comments and evaluation and also your ideas about topics you want us to cover. Please contact us at the address on the screen. Click on FJC broadcasts on the FJTN and then click on court to court to select the evaluation form. There are two forms. One can be printed, filled out and mailed or faxed to us. The other can be completed online. Both forms invite your ideas for future topics. Please join us for our next program to learn how one court makes career development available to all staff. And we'll see what viruses and bugs can do to a healthy computer. On behalf of everyone at the Federal Judicial Center, I'm Michael Burney. Thank you for watching today.