CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Mecklenburg County’s new eCourts system was temporarily suspended, according to a county judge.
Mecklenburg County Chief District Court Judge Elizabeth Trosch said the courts would move back to paper processes late Sunday evening in an email.
The system, which launched on Oct. 9, intended to “streamline” bookings and charges after a test run earlier in eastern North Carolina counties. Officials had delayed the implementation from a May start date because of technical issues.
In her email Sunday night, Trosch said that the “eWarrants and odyssey outages, service and inoperability are causing significant delays in completing processes at the jail.”
Trosch said that magistrates were “unable to complete criminal processes in eWarrants.”
On Monday, a North Carolina Judicial Branch representative said the system appeared to be in use, citing upgrades Sunday night.
“Following a regular software update, the eCourts vendor had to conduct additional maintenance to resolve an issue in which magistrates could not select a future court date while completing criminal processes in eWarrants,” N.C. Communications Director Graham Wilson said. “This issue lasted from approximately 6 p.m. to midnight and no other eWarrants functionality was impacted. For those processes that required entry of a next court date, those processes had to be completed in paper during that timeframe and were later entered into the system.”
The outage lasted for more than six hours during which some processes had to be completed on paper.
