The first U.S. criminal jury trial conducted via video conference in Austin, Texas, this week is getting more scrutiny than the typical traffic matter as court administrators and legal observers tease out lessons for future cases.
Possible Model: The trial—which drew about 1,000 YouTube viewers at one point—had its share of technical glitches. But Presiding Judge Nicholas Chu and Texas court administrators think the experiment went well enough to serve as a potential model for how to restart jury trials in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Major Questions: “Being the first in terms of figuring all this out, we ...