Thursday, May 7, 2009

A brief respite


We're catching up on cases and things get back to "normal" next week.

Whatever normal is.

Jury trials remain closed until Monday
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Though Landa Park, Camp Comal and the New Braunfels Civic/Convention Center reopened Wednesday, county and municipal courts still are running limited operations.

To prevent the spread of swine flu, all four district courts, both county courts at law and Municipal Court ceased jury trials this week.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed course on Tuesday, announcing that swine flu was not as dangerous as originally anticipated and that closed schools were allowed to reopen.

Still, the courts did not follow suit and will remain closed, at least to jury trials, through the rest of the week.

Court coordinator Savanna Maurer said jury dockets will pick up again Monday for district and county courts. For now, Maurer said, the courts will continue with non-jury dockets.

Municipal Court will begin court proceedings again on Monday, New Braunfels Assistant City Manager Robert Camereno said.

Comal County Criminal District Attorney Geoffrey Barr said the lack of jury trials did not slow the attorneys down.

“If anything, it’s given us an opportunity to get behind our desks and work on some cases,” Barr said. “They’re still moving cases through. I don’t think we’ve been hindered much by this actually.”

Justice of the peace courts continued with usual proceedings throughout the week.