Texas in Court Record Feeds and Releases
July 23, 2004.
The debate over the public's right to know versus an individual's right to privacy is not new, but it has intensified since some Texas courts began posting court case documents on the Internet.
For years, a trip to the courthouse was necessary to access case records. Now that information could be as close as your home computer.
As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Jurisprudence and a strong advocate for open government, I am very interested in a study currently being conducted by a 17-member committee appointed by Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips.
The membership of the Committee on Public Access to Court Records includes several active judges, district and county clerks, legislators and open-government advocates. The committee is considering whether certain information in court records that is available at the courthouse, and possibly already online, should be off limits.
I do not want Texas courts to become unwitting accomplices of identity thieves or stalkers who may use the Internet to access sensitive and personal information found in many court documents and use it unlawfully. Neither do I want the courts to deny access to records that allow the public to monitor the operation of their court system. Electronic access to court records helps those who cannot go to courthouses during normal business hours to research everything from family history to tax appraisals.
Monday, January 7, 2002. (Austin)--Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander vowed today to "use every weapon in our arsenal" to fight a court battle brought by a large insurance company that could eventually cost Texans $2 billion and jeopardize the state budget. As court records reflect, in 2000, the company requested a refund for the period of February 1991 through December 1999 for already paid sales tax.
Michael Houston Russell, a drug defendant from San Antonio, was prosecuted during a drug task force investigation of a ring that grew hundreds of marijuana plants in south Texas, court records show. He pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the manufacture of more than 100 marijuana plants, and was sentenced to three years of probation, his court file shows.
Texas District Courts
There are 4 District courts in the state of Texas. The federal district courts whose jurisdiction is comprised of the Texas counties, are Texas Eastern District Court, Texas Northern District Court, Texas Southern District Court, and Texas Western District Court.
County Level Jurisdictions
The $20 million digital imaging project involving court records in Harris County, Texas has received a Best Practices award from the Texas Association of Counties Leadership Foundation. The project, which involves 160 temporary employees scanning 200 million pages of county court documents dating to 1837 and filing them in an online database, is expected to save the county $10 million a year once paper filing and copying have been eliminated when the project is completed in three years.
The Houston Chronicle, 18 Aug. 2006
Texas state court record county reference list:
Anderson, Andrews, Angelina, Aransas, Archer, Armstrong, Atascosa, Austin, Bailey, Bandera, Bastrop, Baylor, Bee, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Borden, Bosque, Bowie, Brazoria, Brazos, Brewster, Briscoe, Brooks, Brown, Burleson, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, Camp, Carson, Cass, Castro, Chambers, Cherokee, Childress, Clay, Cochran, Coke, Coleman, Collin, Collingsworth, Colorado, Comal, Comanche, Concho, Cooke, Coryell, Cottle, Crane, Crockett, Crosby, Dallam, Dallas, Dawson, Deaf Smith, Delta, Denton, Dewitt, Dickens, Dimmit, Donley, Duval, Eastland, Ector, Edwards, El Paso, Ellis, Erath, Falls, Fannin, Fayette, Fisher, Floyd, Foard, Fort Bend, Franklin, Freestone, Frio, Gaines, Galveston, Garza, Gillespie, Glasscock, Goliad, Gonzales, Gray, Grayson, Gregg, Grimes, Guadalupe, Hale, Hall, Hamilton, Hansford, Hardeman, Hardin, Harris, Harrison, Hartley, Haskell, Hays, Hemphill, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hill, Hockley, Hood, Hopkins, Houston, Howard, Hudspeth, Hunt, Hutchinson, Irion, Jack, Jackson, Jasper, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Jones, Karnes, Kaufman, Kendall, Kenedy, Kent, Kerr, Kimble, King, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, La Salle, Lamar, Lamb, Lampasas, Lavaca, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Limestone, Lipscomb, Live Oak, Llano, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Madison, Marion, Martin, Mason, Matagorda, Maverick, Mc Culloch, Mc Lennan, Mc Mullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Mills, Mitchell, Montague, Montgomery, Moore, Morris, Motley, Nacogdoches, Navarro, Newton, Nolan, Nueces, Ochiltree, Oldham, Orange, Palo Pinto, Panola, Parker, Parmer, Pecos, Polk, Potter, Presidio, Rains, Randall, Reagan, Real, Red River, Reeves, Refugio, Roberts, Robertson, Rockwall, Runnels, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, San Patricio, San Saba, Schleicher, Scurry, Shackelford, Shelby, Sherman, Smith, Somervell, Starr, Stephens, Sterling, Stonewall, Sutton, Swisher, Tarrant, Taylor, Terrell, Terry, Throckmorton, Titus, Tom Green, Travis, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur, Upton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Van Zandt, Victoria, Walker, Waller, Ward, Washington, Webb, Wharton, Wheeler, Wichita, Wilbarger, Willacy, Williamson, Wilson, Winkler, Wise, Wood, Yoakum, Young, Zapata, Zavala
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