Sohail Mohammed '88, Tech-Savvy Judge, Helps Usher in COVID-Era Virtual Courtrooms
On March 15, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner suspended in-person proceedings in New Jersey Superior Court, giving the judiciary two days to prepare for virtual courtrooms. By that afternoon, Passaic County Superior Court Judge Sohail Mohammed, ’88, a former electrical engineer and technology enthusiast, had already established one in the basement of his house.
His real work began the next day, however. In Zoom conferences with about 150 people, Mohammed began teaching fellow judges, law clerks and attorneys the mechanics of conducting cases by phone, tablet and videoconference – how to conduct remote proceedings such as plea negotiations, hearings, oral arguments, sentencing and restraining orders; merge phone calls and join interpreters; send encrypted documents to protect medical and other personal records; and create virtual breakout rooms on Zoom that allow attorneys to confer privately with their clients one minute and the judge the next.
Within a couple of weeks, New Jersey moved all court functions handled by the judiciary’s nearly 10,000 employees across 600 facilities to remote operations. In one week alone, the system jumped from 21 pre-COVID virtual courtrooms, which support first court appearance hearings for people over weekends, to 230 virtual courtrooms for routine court matters that are streamed live to the public. There are now around 350.
“It was a monumental task to accomplish within such a short amount of time – six months of work in six days. We established VPNs for everyone over a weekend,” recounted Jack McCarthy III, chief information officer for the judiciary’s Information Technology Office. “To build courtrooms, we needed to be able to connect everyone, including people in jails, which have old technology; stream proceedings live to the public; provide backup recording systems; and ensure security, for which we use two-factor authentications, among other tasks.”
Because of his technical savvy, Mohammed was asked by his assignment judge, Ernest Caposela, to help expedite the massive push. He has since instructed more than 2,500 people from around the state, from the Passaic County Bar Association in the early days, to the Bergen, Essex and state bars, to, most recently, municipal court judges and attorneys.
With the exclusion of jury trials, New Jersey courts are handling virtually all types of legal matters, from drug court hearings, to domestic violence cases, to adoptions. Seated at a desk in his basement with an image of his physical courtroom as background, Mohammed, a Criminal Court judge, is managing a full calendar of two to three dozen cases on his busiest days, Mondays and Fridays.
“There are truly emergent cases that can’t wait, including children who are neglected or abused, people contending with domestic violence, tenants about to be evicted with nowhere to go and people in immediate need of medical treatment weighing decisions about whether to go on life support or not,” Mohammed said.
He added, “But there are so many other cases I view as pressing. For example, a person has completed their pre-trial intervention conditions, a program designed to keep low-level, typically first-time, offenders out of the system, and the case is supposed to be dismissed. Should he or she wait until I return to my physical courtroom to do it? That would be an injustice. Under the circumstances, the person might not be able to get a job.”
Virtual courtrooms are not physical, “but they’re real,” he emphasized in an April training conference with leaders of the New Jersey Bar Association, in which he addressed the technical issues around managing motions, pleas and interpretation services, as well as broader concerns.
“For every problem, we are finding a solution,” he assured the trainees. When a matrimonial lawyer voiced concerns about privacy, Mohammed explained that the judge overseeing the trial can limit the number of people participating in the proceeding by admitting only the people needed for the hearing from the virtual waiting room.
“Sessions in breakout rooms are not recorded,” he added, of confidential talks between lawyers and clients, for example.
Mohammed says he views virtual courtrooms as superior in some aspects. “I can create five private breakout rooms for discussions. All the participants have to do is a press a button to return to my courtroom. We can always figure out the logistics.”
In a recent case, in which an 18-year-old detainee sought pre-trial release from jail over fears of infection by COVID-19, technical glitches threatened to delay the hearing. The man’s mother wanted to accompany him remotely and speak during the review, but was experiencing feedback on her computer. “I called her phone directly from Zoom, directed her to push a button to join and she was in.”
An early adopter of technology in the courtroom, Mohammed grabbed the legal world’s attention back in 2015, when he was asked to come in every day over the winter holiday to handle emergency cases. Instead, he appeared by Skype on a monitor placed on his bench. Participants quickly learned he missed nothing from his virtual perch. “I remember the time I warned people in the courtroom to stop talking and they looked shocked!”
He also notably permitted four expert witnesses from around the country to give remote testimony in a shaken baby trial. “The doctor who had treated the child had moved. And it would have been cost prohibitive to physically bring in the renowned defense experts. So, the IT staff set up a 100-inch screen in my courtroom for them to appear.”
Technical enhancements in his courtroom include:
Displaying documentary evidence, such as photographs of crime scenes, on courtroom monitors so that jurors can view it simultaneously, speeding up what had been a laborious review process and thus allowing both sides to introduce more evidence.
Supplying sheriff’s officers with key fobs he can beep to alert them to problems in the courtroom, including potentially illicit communications, such as hand signals, during gang-related trials. In one instance, he asked an officer to sit behind a woman who was making odd gestures. All was well, however. They turned out to be “call mom” signs from one sister to another. He sometimes will ask officers to deliver a water bottle to a juror who is visibly flagging.
Using cameras to zoom in on maps to show how a crime unfolded over space and time. “It can be impossible to see a small dot on a map on an easel, but if we use a document camera facing the image, we can put it on a screen so that it is easily viewed by people as far as 30 feet away, including the counsel table.”
“My message is that technology is great, and when it fails, all you have to do is come back to the same link. I’ll wait for you. Sometimes even I hit a wrong key or the power goes out. All we have to do is reconnect. Before a trial, I explain how it works, like I’m walking them down the hallway toward the courtroom. Just press yes to enter the breakout room, for example.”
Mohammed has also rethought a variety of physical mechanisms in his courtroom. For example, he created a hidden basket in the witness stand that gave a young sexual assault victim access to a tension ball that the jury would not see, over concerns it might prejudice their view of the case. He’s also added charging stations to keep peoples’ devices running.
“When people come into my courtroom, I want them to feel comfortable,” he said, adding, “As an electrical engineer, I’m trained to be a problem solver.”
He credits three judges in particular – Rabner, Caposela and Glenn Grant, the acting administrative director of the New Jersey Courts – with the “wisdom and vision to infuse courtroom technology during a public health crisis of this magnitude to ensure the judiciary, one of society’s most critical institutions, remains accessible to everyone.”
“We’re so tech-savvy as a society that this is in many ways a normal progression,” he noted.
Indeed, following passage of criminal justice reform legislation in 2016, the New Jersey judiciary began using videoconferencing to expedite bail reviews and first court appearances. If the defendant pled guilty to charges, the case was resolved on the spot.
“We were able to automate the entire process within 48 hours,” McCarthy recounted.
Mohammed believes many routine matters will soon be transacted remotely.
“A lot of procedures that can be done virtually will be. My vision is that as people become accustomed to the technology, a remote presence may become the norm for making arguments, filing motions, pleading to charges and downgrading charges and paying fines,” he noted. “Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the platforms are already there. So why should people have to take time off from work and spend several hours waiting for a simple matter to be heard?”