Drivers who have pending drunken driving cases in some Indiana jurisdictions may have a tougher time negotiating for lighter pleas in Lake County in the future with the advent of the Odyssey record management system, even though Lake itself doesn't use it.
Lake County Superior Court Judge Julie Cantrell said in the past she did not have ready access to records that would show her if a drunken driving defendant appearing before her had a case pending in Porter or LaPorte counties. That changed when those two counties in 2013 joined the state record management system called Odyssey Case Management System.
Cantrell has access to Odyssey records from both Porter and LaPorte counties, as well as other counties that belong to Odyssey. Cantrell indicated that information would play a part in whether she would accept a plea agreement that called for someone charged with driving while intoxicated to receive the lighter sentence of reckless driving.
But because Lake is not yet part of Odyssey, judges in other counties don't have that same ease of access when it comes to Lake County court records. Lake currently operates its own online court docket system.
Cantrell and Chief Judge John Pera said a decision is expected to be made later this year on whether Lake County should join the Odyssey system.
Cantrell said in "talking to other judges that have it, they like it."
Pending case information is not as readily available on defendants facing charges in Gary, either. Even though the city is in Lake County, its city court is neither on the Odyssey system nor the record-management system currently used in Lake County.
The Times used information acquired from both Odyssey and Lake County's record-management systems to analyze drunken driving convictions in the the three counties for 2014.
An earlier attempt to analyze 2013 data in Porter and LaPorte counties hit a snag, because some court records for those two counties did not transfer over smoothly when the conversion took place to Odyssey from their former computer data systems.
The public information officer with the Indiana Supreme Court, Kathryn Dolan, said she was not surprised to learn court records had not transferred over completely or 100 percent accurately when Porter County joined the statewide Odyssey record management system near the end of 2013.
Inconsistencies with inputting before the switch resulted in a partial loss and inaccuracies among this "legacy data," Dolan said.
The data entered directly into Odyssey last year, and now ongoing, are free of these problems, which is among the strong suits of the system now in place in 51 of the state's 92 counties counties, and which accounts for 60 percent of the state's new court filings, she said.
Odyssey becoming standard in state
Odyssey Case Management System is a state-funded effort to bring uniformity to court case-management systems across Indiana. It brings files together from various counties and provides not only free public access, but also links them with one another and with state agencies.
Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, whose office inputs data into Odyssey, said she and her staff are big fans of the system.
Odyssey not only only brought uniformity to the entry of court records, but also has improved the tracking and accountability of fines and fees paid to the office, she said.
Porter County joined the system in part in October 2011, with its traffic infractions and ordinance violations. That move alone reduced the workload in the busy clerk's office enough to allow employees to be shifted to other areas of need, Martin had said.
The county then jumped in with both feet in September 2013, by transferring over its criminal and civil court cases.
Clerk staff had been entering a variety of codes under the former record-keeping system, Martin said. Odyssey requires uniformity and, thus, results in greater accuracy, she said.
"I have confidence in Odyssey," she said.
Counties have come to Odyssey from a variety of other record-keeping approaches, which has resulted in various levels of success with transferring over old data, Dolan said. A couple counties were still using pen-and-paper record-keeping, she said, which means none of that "legacy" data could be transferred to Odyssey.
These types of inconsistencies and access issues are no longer a problem once counties join Odyssey, she said.
"We work with the (local) leaders to try to achieve best practices," Dolan said.
Any data that did not transfer well to Odyssey can still be obtained by the public at the appropriate county clerks offices, she said.
Electronic filing of documents is next on the horizon for the system, Dolan said.