Court documents are supposed to be easily accessible to the public under Oklahoma’s open records law, but Tulsa Municipal Court has removed computer terminals where people could look up case information.
The Oklahoma Open Records Act requires “prompt, reasonable access” to records, but it can take weeks or months for Tulsa Municipal Court to fill requests for documents. The court handles misdemeanor traffic, parking and criminal charges, as well as city code violations.
The Frontier visited the municipal court clerk’s office in person. But a municipal court worker in the records division denied a reporter’s request to view case information and said the only way to see a file was to submit an open records request online.
Tulsa Municipal Court’s website states that record requests may take one to three business days to complete, but it took 30 days for The Frontier to get records.
A separate request for records to the Tulsa Municipal Court by another Frontier reporter took more than a month to be processed and a third, separate request was not completed for nearly two months.
Weeks-long delays for the public to access what should be simple court records are “unacceptable,” said Joey Senat, associate professor of media and strategic communications at Oklahoma State University and an expert on open government, media law and freedom of information laws.
“Closed courts are the biggest threat to justice,” Senat said. “If you can’t get access to court records, then you have no idea what the courts are actually doing, and access delayed is the same as access denied — the public is unable to oversee its own court system if obstacles are set up to delay or deny that access.”
Senat, himself a former journalist, said he has never encountered a court that would not immediately provide its case files for public review upon request.
Carson Colvin, a spokesperson for the City of Tulsa, said the city removed public access terminals to look up court records in 2021 because of computer security protocols. He said the court plans to launch a website sometime next year that would allow online searches of records.
Colvin, who did not answer several follow-up questions from The Frontier, said the city has received few complaints from the public about access to its court records.
“While it’s correct that requests are typically fulfilled within a few days, there have been no other concerns raised by the public regarding access to those records,” Colvin said in a statement.“We’re confident that by providing the public with direct online access to court records, we’ll be able to meet the requests of the public more directly and improve the customer experience for all Tulsans who interact with our court system.”
Tulsa Municipal Court Clerk Administrator Cheri Harvell and Municipal Courts Records Supervisor Jamie King didn’t respond to interview requests. Presiding Municipal Court Judge Lisa Deller declined an interview.
At least one federal court ruling has held that court officials who delay public access to court filings violate First Amendment rights to timely access to information.
The nonprofit newsroom Oklahoma Watch submitted an open records request to the Tulsa Municipal Court in July for five years’ worth of jaywalking charges. Court staff advised the reporter via email to send her request to the Tulsa Police Department instead. Court staff stopped responding after the reporter replied that she had police records but still also needed the court’s case records, said Ted Streuli, executive editor of Oklahoma Watch.
When the reporter followed up with an email, City of Tulsa staff said it would probably take weeks to fill her request.
Oklahoma City’s municipal court and state district court records have already been available online in searchable databases for years.
On Sept. 18, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press attorney Leslie Briggs sent the Tulsa Municipal Court a letter on behalf of The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch asking that the court begin providing immediate access to citations and court filings.
Refusing to provide public court filings on request and interposing unnecessary procedural formalities and delays before producing records, violates the clear requirements of the ORA (Oklahoma Open Records Act) and fundamental rights of public access to court proceedings and records under both the common law and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Briggs wrote in the letter.
Other courts provide immediate access to records
Christin Szymak, deputy general counsel for the Oklahoma Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees the state’s district court system, says information is published online, except in a few cases where the crime involves a minor or is a sex crime. State courts in Oklahoma display most of their court records online at OSCN.net and ODCR.com In cases where individual records themselves might be sealed or prohibited from public view, there is at least a record of the court docket that can be viewed by the public online, Szymak said.
“Oklahoma courts, the district courts on the state level, really err on the side of full transparency and disclosure to the public about ongoing court cases that are not confidential in nature,” Szymak said.
But before those online court record systems came into existence, the practice to obtain records from the court mostly involved a trip to the court clerk’s office, where the records would be made available on request, Szymak said.
Oklahoma City’s Municipal Court Administrator Mankinta Holloway said that the court system’s online search site came online around 2016, and includes daily court dockets and case information. Requests for physical copies of the court’s records can be made online or in person, he said.
“Everything that happens at this level is open to the public,” Holloway said.