Westmoreland jury trials to resume in February

After a two-month hiatus caused by the winter surge of new coronavirus cases, jury trials in Westmoreland County will resume in February.

President Judge Rita Hathaway said, with new cases of the virus on the decline, it appears safe to reconvene trials, which were suspended in December and January.

“When we had the spike, we decided it would be prudent to stop. Now, we feel we are able to resume because everything is backed up and we need to get moving,” Hathaway said.

The courts continued to operate throughout the pandemic even as a number of judges and staff members contracted the virus over the last several months. Court motions, legal arguments, guilty pleas and other matters were handled both in person in courtrooms as well as remotely by video and telephone.

After a four-month delay last spring following the onset of the pandemic, jury trials resumed in August and continued through November before the most recent hiatus.

To account for safety concerns due to the virus, jury selection was split among several locations for each case to reduce the numbers of people in the courtroom at one time. Jurors during trials were socially distanced and deliberations were conducted inside locked courtrooms. Masks were required and spectators were limited.

Those precautions will continue when criminal trials resume on Feb. 22, Hathaway said.

The county’s four criminal court judges are scheduled over the next several weeks to prioritize the trial lists. As of Friday, there were about 360 cases listed for the one-week trial term in February.

“The judges and attorneys have been working cases over the last couple of weeks to see what cases are ready for trial,” said Deputy Court Administrator Pam Neiderhiser. “They’ve done a lot by mail ahead of time to limit the number of people who have to come to court.”

Civil trials will restart in early March.

Hathaway on Friday lifted a court order she first issued in late November and extended at the start of January that halted jail inmates from being brought to the courthouse and to local magistrate offices for court hearings following a coronavirus outbreak at Westmoreland County Prison.

Jail officials said the outbreak has been contained and no new cases among inmates were reported in more than a week.