SJI NEWSLETTER 

In this Issue 

Page 1 

Volume 28, No. 3 

FY 2018 1st Quarter 

Grants 

1 

Chief Justice Minton 

Elected Board Chair 

2 

Automated Redaction 

Report 

2 

December Trends 

Features High Profile 

Case Management 

3 

December 2017 

The SJI Board of Directors met on December 4, 2017, 

at SJI Headquarters in Reston, VA, to make decisions 

on quarterly grant applications, and awarded a total of 

nine new grants. 

A Strategic Initiatives Grant (SIG) was awarded to 

the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court 

Judges (NCFJCJ) for an initiative on Military Families in Juvenile and Family courts. In partnership with 

the Department of Defense (DOD), the initiative will: 

Establish a project 

Task Force of Military Committee 

members and armed 

services members to 

guide the initiative. 

Formulate uniform 

standards for information and resource 

sharing, with a major emphasis on the development of templates for 

MOUs between state courts and military posts. 

Identify and recruit juvenile and family courts in 

jurisdictions with significant military presence to 

serve as pilot sites. 

Create an online National Resource Center on 

Military Families in the Juvenile and Family 

Courts. 

Create documents for state courts/military installations, including template MOUs, bench cards, 

resource guidelines, and links to services. 

Develop a training curriculum for judges, military command, and key stakeholders on the 

unique issues of military families. 

SJI Awards FY 2018 First Quarter Grants 

Products and 

Resources

Since 2011, SJI has designated 

the library at the National Center 

for State Courts as the official 

repository of published work 

related to SJI-supported grant 

projects. You can search the 

ecollection online by using the 

term, State Justice Institute. 

Hold a second Summit on Military Families and 

State Courts for continuing and sustaining these 

efforts. 

A Project Grant was awarded to the National Association for Court Management (NACM) to meet its 

goals of providing comprehensive educational programs, publications, online forums, and distance 

learning opportunities to increase the knowledge, 

skills, and abilities of its members and within the 

judicial system. Specifically, the project will 

support educational sessions for NACM midyear and annual meetings, including sessions 

covering all of SJI’s 

Priority Investment Areas. 

Four (4) Technical Assistance (TA) Grants 

were awarded: the King County, Washington, Superior Court for an on-boarding and leadership program; the Arkansas Administrative Office of the 

Courts for a case management strategic plan; the 

Arizona Supreme Court for a Fair Justice for Persons 

with Mental Illness initiative; and the Florida Office 

of the State Courts Administrator for an information 

technology assessment.

Three (3) Curriculum Adaptation and Training 

(CAT) Grants were awarded: the Michigan Court 

Administration Association to support statewide 

Institute for Court Management training programs; 

the National Association for Women Judges (NAWJ) 

for an elder issues project; and the Nebraska Judicial 

Branch for judicial education on sex offender management. 
Page 2 

SJI Newsletter Volume 28, No. 3 December 2017 

Chief Justice Minton Elected SJI Board Chair 

During its recent meeting, the SJI Board held a special election for the 

Chair position and Chief Justice John Minton from Kentucky was elected 

as Chair. 

John D. Minton Jr. is serving his second eight-year term on the Supreme 

Court of Kentucky and his third four-year term as chief justice. He is the 

2016-2017 president of the Conference of Chief Justices and chair of the 

National Center for State Courts Board of Directors. He was appointed 

to the SJI Board of Directors in 2016. He was previously in private practice and a judge for the Circuit Court and Court of Appeals. He holds 

degrees from Western Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky College of Law. 

Automated Redaction 

Proof of Concept Report 

Former Chair, Chief Justice Chase 

Rogers, announced her retirement 

from the bench effective in February, and called for a special election 

for the SJI Board Chair position. 

While retiring from the bench, she 

will continue serving on the Board 

of Directors. 

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) recently published Best 

Practices for Court Privacy Policy Formulation, which includes the 

updated public access and privacy guidelines from an earlier Conference 

of State Court Administrators (COSCA) model (released in 2002). A 

proof of concept (POC) report was needed to determine the accuracy of 

automatically redacted information, which should be generated in conjunction with the revised Model Policy for Electronic Public Access to 

Court Case Records. The NCSC collaborated with Computing System 

Innovations (CSI) and Extract, - private vendors offering automated data

-identification tools in their product lines, as well as state and local 

courts, which provided the records essential to the POC review process. 

Some highlights of the report beyond its descriptive methodology, include the following: 

A breakdown of accuracy rates by: Redaction Target, High-level 

(overall), Data and Document Types; 

Description of the essential components needed for testing within 

the court case records; and, 

A multi-factor system for determining redacted targets. 

Issued in September 2017, the full report titled, “Automated Redaction: 

Proof of Concept Report,” is available online, through the NCSC Library’s eCollection. Also included among the list of COSCA resources, 

this report, reaffirms the connection to content and methodology when 

reviewing for accuracy across redacted records. 
Page 3 

SJI Board of Directors

Chair 

Chase T. Rogers 

Chief Justice 

Supreme Court of Connecticut 

Hartford, CT 

Vice Chair

Daniel J. Becker 

State Court Administrator (ret.) 

Utah AOC 

Salt Lake City, UT 

Secretary 

Gayle A. Nachtigal 

Senior Circuit Court Judge 

Washington County Circuit Court 

Hillsboro, OR 

Treasurer 

John B. Nalbandian 

Partner 

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP 

Cincinnati, OH 

Jonathan Lippman 

Chief Judge of New York (ret.) 

Of Counsel 

Latham & Watkins, LLP 

New York, NY 

John D. Minton, Jr. 

Chief Justice 

Supreme Court of Kentucky 

Frankfort, KY 

David V. Brewer 

Justice 

Oregon Supreme Court 

Salem, OR 

Wilfredo Martinez 

County Judge 

9th Judicial Circuit of Florida 

Orlando, FL 

Marsha J. Rabiteau 

President & CEO 

Center for HT Court Solutions 

Bloomfield, CT 

Hernan D. Vera 

Principal 

Bird Marella P.C. 

Los Angeles, CA 

Isabel Framer 

President 

Language Access Consultants, LLC 

Copley, OH 

Jonathan D. Mattiello 

Executive Director 

The State Justice Institute is a federallyfunded, non-profit corporation established by 

federal law in 1984 to improve the quality of 

jus- tice 

in the 

state 

SJI Newsletter Volume 28, No. 3 December 2017 

continuity of operations planning, updated content from Managing Notorious Trials, originally published in 1992 (updated in 1998), media relations, and critical constitutional case law, among other resources. 

December Trends Features 

High Profile Case Management 

Trends In State Courts is both an annual publication and a website 

with a “Monthly Trends” feature. 

This month, the featured trend was Managing High-Profile Cases, 

which has been a focus of collaborative grant work between SJI and 

several key partners, including the National Center for State Courts, 

Conference of Court Public Information Officers, and the National 

Judicial College. 

A high-profile case is defined in the piece as, “a case that attracts 

enough media or public attention that the court must or should make 

significant alterations to ordinary court procedures to manage it.” 

This could be because of attachment to a particular issue at the forefront of society, involvement of a celebrity, or some other element of 

the case that captures the media’s attention. 

In the feature, the Managing High-Profile Cases in the 21st Century 

website is cited as the primary reference tool for all existing work 

related to these cases, which includes definitions and examples,