The Iowa Supreme Court has reopened all in-person court proceedings, after temporarily suspending certain proceedings, like jury trials until last month. 

Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn says the temporary suspension was due to the pandemic, which also impacted some of his criminal caseload. As of Tuesday, Lahen says there were 79 pending criminal cases, along with 8-9 indictable offenses. He points out those cases are about 20-percent down from where they were during the height of the pandemic last year. As part of suspending in-person hearings and trials, Laehn notes the Iowa Supreme Court allows cases to proceed with other methods. 

“Which allowed us to successfully resolve a large number of our cases, either via Zoom or other video conferencing platforms, or in writing. So we actually were able to slowly but surely work our way through a number of cases during the pandemic.”

Laehn says even during the most recent jury trial earlier this month, the pandemic changed how that was conducted. He points out jury selection took place at the Jefferson Elks Lodge and once the jury was picked, they had to sit in the courtroom gallery, while using the jury box as the witness stand to accommodate the social distancing guidelines.

Laehn gives his impression of how the first jury trial of 2021 went despite some of those changes.

“On the whole it was a very successful trial. We started jury selection at 9 o’clock in the morning and the jury came back with a guilty verdict about 5:30 that afternoon. So it did delay things slightly but we were able to successfully complete the trial in one day.”

Laehn adds the next scheduled jury trial for Greene County is April 6th and he anticipates going through a similar process.