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The United State Court
System, an Eye for Research
by: Matthew Abts
A Cup of Tea, Coffee, or Something Else
www.quiettable.com
Whenever investigating an individual or
business, one of the most basic checks is for lawsuits,
criminal charges, and bankruptcy filings. But how do you
research the court system? Is there one simple site to go to
where you pop in a name and are rewarded with a listing of
all court filings across the country pertaining to that
individual? No such luck ... yet, anyway! To understand
court research, you first need to understand a bit about the
USA's court system.
There are two major separate court
entities in the USA, the State court system and the Federal
court system. The Federal court system is divided into three
branches, the federal criminal, civil, bankruptcy, and
appeals courts. These courts are not 'single entities' --
there are a number of federal courts scattered across the
United States, each covering a certain geographic district
within a 'circuit'. For a map of the circuits, see
www.uscourts.gov/images/CircuitMap.pdf. For example, there
is a Northern Mississippi district court, as well as a
Southern. Cases are prosecuted by US Attorneys, who are
elected, or Assistant US Attorneys, who are government
employees. Regarding federal law, federal statutes are
divided into sections called Titles. Title 11, for example,
deals with bankcruptcy, and under that Title you will find
Chapters, such as Chapter 7 regarding liquidation of a
business. All personal and business bankruptcies fall under
federal statutes and are dealt with in federal court, and
bankruptcies make up nearly 70% of all federal court cases.
This makes researching whether an individual has a history
of bankcruptcy a considerably simpler matter, since only the
relevant federal court needs to be searched. Title 18
contains the majority of the criminal statutes for the
federal criminal court. Note that in many cases it can be
decided for an individual to be tried in the federal rather
than State court system, under federal-question jurisdiction
rules, for a variety of reasons. For example, in a recent
case where two teens burned a cross in a black family's
yard, it was decided to prosecute them in federal rather
than State court -- the penalties that could be imposed by
the federal court system were greater. Likewise, cases
involving citizens from different States will be tried in
Federal courts if the monetary amount involved in the case
is greater than $75,000. There are a number of other types
of cases that are likewise defaulted to federal court,
including cases involving patents or copyrights, cases
challenging State laws (usually for Constitutional reasons),
and cases involving federal agencies.
The State court system is somewhat more
complex in its terminology, since this terminology differs
from State to State, but in the end the terminology resolves
into a system of 'upper' and 'lower' courts in civil and
criminal matters. The State civil court was an 'upper' and
'lower' court, as does the State criminal court. In some
States, these are referred to as the 'supreme' and 'county'
courts, or the 'superior' and 'justice' courts. The upper
courts tend to deal with more important subjects, or crimes
with stiffer penalties (such as armed robbery, cases of
gross malpractice, and often divorce). Lower courts will
deal with misdemeanor crimes and small money claims (ie,
small claims court). In criminal cases of all sorts, the
prosecutor is usually the United States government (from the
State's attorney office), and the case will be lised as The
State of Wherever V. Lastname. Upper and lower courts are
relatively simple to understand -- big money cases or cases
involving serious crimes go the upper, and everything of
lesser importance to the lower, but don't forget that most
divorces are tried in the upper court! Unfortunately, the
State court system doesn't stop there, but also includes,
depending on the State, a variety of other courts such as
the municipal court or traffic court, which handle matters
specific to their speciality (ie, argue traffic tickets in
traffic court). There are also appellate courts, for dealing
with appeals.
So, now that we understand the court
system a bit better, how do we go about finding court
records? For Federal courts, this is a relatively simple
matter: The majority of records are accessible through a
system called PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic
Records). PACER allows searching different courts by a
variety of fields, including name. You as a citizen can sign
up for PACER with a credit card at
http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/ -- the service isn't
free, but only charges a few dollars for good documentation
on most cases. Note that some districts still aren't in the
PACER system (for example, the Alaska district court) -- in
this case, you can always pay a visit to the nearest
district federal courthouse. Every district has one, and the
records should be open to the public for free. Feel free to
drive there and peruse! If the district court is further
than you want to travel, there are courthouse researchers
across the country who make a living looking up court
records for those to far away from the court to visit in
person.
State records are somewhat more complex.
To access these records over the Internet, not only should
the State records be online, but also the individual county
in question. Most State higher court and appellate courts
are online with free searching, but many lower (county)
courts are not, only offer some records, or charge high
fees. Of course, if you're only interested in researching
cases in your area, all you need to do is drive to your
local county courthouse, where the records are, by Federal
law, public access. Your county courthouse should not charge
you a fee to access these records, they should be free to
peruse. Charging a fee online is for 'electronic access',
not for seeing the actual documents themselves. Once again,
if the county is outside your area you can hire a
courtresearcher to do the job for you. To find county court
researches and county/State courts on the Internet, simply
do a search engine search for 'Countyname county court', and
follow the links from there.
About The Author
Matthew Abts is an x-military private
investigator specializing in background investigations and
judicial claims processing. |
