Judge of Catalina Island Court Offers Long-Distance Justice

When Judge Peter J. Mirich first took the bench at Catalina Island’s Justice Court, he thought he had heard every possible excuse for why a defendant didn’t get to court on time.

But his once-a-week service in the unique little island courthouse brought a new excuse to his ears.

In bad weather or heavy fog, ferries and helicopters simply could not make it out to the island, leaving attorneys and defendants stranded at the San Pedro docks.

Besides, they complained, repeated trips to handle numerous routine arraignments and pretrial hearings and motions were an expensive burden on the accused.

So Mirich decided to find out whether modern technology could solve the problem.

As a result, Catalina recently joined a handful of California courts that allow attorneys and their clients to “appear” before the judge by telephone.

Not a single person has taken advantage of the system during its first two weeks in operation. But Mirich has no doubt that the telephone will be ringing constantly once word gets out about the program.

“It’s a natural for this court. . . . You can imagine what it costs a defendant to pay an attorney for an entire day on a routine matter,” Mirich said.

The new system uses a speaker phone hooked into the courtroom’s public-address system to broadcast what attorneys and their clients have to say; they then can hear replies from the judge and other attorneys present in the courtroom.

Attorneys must fax the court a written request to appear by telephone at least three days before the scheduled hearing. Motions and other documents also can be sent by facsimile machine. On the day of the hearing, the attorney and client verify their identities by faxing their signatures to the court clerk.

Mirich said interested attorneys should call the court at 510-0026.

“It’s really kind of high-tech for a courtroom that’s in a one-room courthouse . . . that 30 months ago, when I took the bench over there, had no copy machine, no fax machine and it had a leaky roof,” Mirich said.

After asking to merge the Catalina court with the South Bay Judicial District, Mirich set about working with South Bay Municipal Court Administrator Christopher Crawford to modernize the one-room courthouse.

“We still have the leaky roof, but we’ve got the technology that I think is going to answer a need.”