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Law360 (June 4, 2020, 10:29 PM EDT) -- The Florida judiciary's COVID-19 Workgroup has tabbed five trial courts across the state, including those in Miami and Orlando, to try conducting a remote jury trial as part of a pilot program while traditional jury trials are halted because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The workgroup, which was formed by Florida Chief Justice Charles Canady in May, announced Wednesday via the Florida Supreme Court that it selected these courts to hold civil jury trials with remote technology to see if it could offer a safer alternative to in-person jury trials, which are suspended across the state at least through July 2.
The courts are Jacksonville's Fourth Judicial Circuit, Daytona Beach's Seventh Judicial Circuit, Orlando's Ninth Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County's Eleventh Judicial Circuit and For Myers' Twentieth Judicial Circuit.
The workgroup is headed by Orlando-area Circuit Judge Lisa Taylor Munyon, who told Law360 Thursday that the pilot trial has to be completed by the end of July, and that the selected courts are allowed to begin summoning jurors for the pilot as soon as they are ready.
Judge Munyon said the five circuit courts were selected because they proposed a range of approaches, encompassing both fully remote court proceedings to a combination of remote and in-person operations.
Each court will be able to make its own decision about what technology platform to use for its pilot trial.
Judge Munyon told Law360 the circuit courts will have to follow up their pilot trials with surveys of the jurors, judges and attorneys involved, "to find out what worked, what didn't, what they liked, what they didn't like."
The program is confined to civil cases for now, and because of the additional constitutional mandates involved in criminal trials, the court system would have to undertake another "more robust pilot" first before venturing into those waters, according to the judge.
Judge Munyon said that while there's no indication the court is yet looking to put remote trials in place as a permanent measure, the workgroup was created to look at long-term possibilities.
"You never know what the future holds," she said. "If this is successful it might assist in moving some civil cases along, and if it's not at least we will know where the roadblocks are."
Miami-area attorney Alex Alvarez of The Alvarez Law Firm, who represents plaintiffs in tobacco litigation, said he's taken about 40 cases to a jury in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit and told Law360 he saw the pilot program as a much-needed step.
"If you want to look at something positive coming from [the pandemic], I think it's pushed the court system 10 years ahead in technology, it's forced us to look ahead," he said. "When you look at technology our industry, the legal industry is way way behind, compared to medicine and others."
Alvarez said he has had several trials continue through the pandemic, and has a July trial on the calendar in Miami-Dade County.
Alvarez said he expects it to be a process of "trial and error" figuring out how to hold jury trials remotely, but noted that it's necessary to be able to hold trials safely during the pandemic. Alvarez said Miami-Dade County's "outdated" courthouse, built in 1925, just isn't physically equipped to handle in-person operations during a pandemic.
"How are you going to be able to get hundreds of jurors into the elevators during a pandemic and observe social distancing?" he said. "You're not going to be able to do it."
In fact, it's jury selection that's Alvarez's biggest concern about a remote trial. For a complex civil trial that is going to last multiple weeks, he said it can take an initial pool of 100 to 150 potential jurors to select the final panel.
Getting that many people on one remote video call will be a challenge, and so courts may have to look into somehow breaking the process up into smaller groups and taking more time with it, Alvarez said.
As for any concern that once a remote jury is selected, they will be hampered in their ability to absorb evidence or argument, however, Alvarez wasn't having it.
"If they're not going to pay attention to you on Zoom, they're weren't going to pay attention to you in the courtroom," he said.
--Editing by Amy Rowe.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
