Therese Murphy:

My name is Therese Murphy. I’m the manager of Yakima County District Court. I’ve been managing the court since about 2011. My background actually is as a lawyer. I’ve been a practicing since 2001 primarily in the area of criminal law working as a prosecuting attorney in various counties in the state of Washington. I left that line of work and came to work for the district court judges here in Yakima in 2011. I also happen to be a judge in a small city in the Lower Valley in Yakima County as well.

I’m here to tell you a little bit about Yakima County’s experience with the OnBase solution as well as the TrueFiling solution, both of which have been deployed in our county, in our court I should say, since mid-2016. Just a little bit about Yakima County, we are the second largest county by land mass in the state of Washington. There are 39 total in our state. We have a population of just under 250,000 people. The largest city is Yakima. That is where I am sitting today, in Yakima, the city of Yakima. As far as employment is concerned, primarily agricultural, health services, and local government. One of our claims to fame here in Yakima, in particular the area I live in, which is Moxee right outside of Yakima, is that we produce 75% of the hops made in the United States for beer and nearly almost the entire world. We are very rich in alcohol production here in Yakima County. A lot of great wineries and craft beer operations working in our community.

Yakima County District Court is actually a Court of Limited Jurisdiction. We not only accept cases filed by the county itself, but we also contract with several municipalities in our county to provide court services, namely Union Gap, Mabton and Grand View are the ones that we’re contracting with right now. My responsibility as part of Yakima District Court is not just the clerk’s office, but also the Adult Probation Services Department and Pretrial Services. We have five judicial officers, four elected judges, and one commissioner. 43 staff among all of our departments. We have two locations. One in Yakima and one in Grand View. A Court of Limited Jurisdiction in our state is just that. We are limited in the things that we can hear. Primarily infractions, minor criminal defense, which are defined as anything that has a jail sentence of 364 days or less, civil suits, seeking damages in a value less than $100,000, small claims less than 5,000, name changes, and anti-harassment stalking protection orders are the types of things that our judges preside over.

All right. As I indicated, we have two locations in our county. They are 41 miles apart. The picture there is one of my judicial officers, Judge Sanderson. That isn’t his real car. It wishes it was his real car, but it’s not. He does really drive that way, such that a stop sign would be crashed to the ground. He would deny it, but I don’t agree. Nonetheless, I am in Yakima, which is the picture of the main courthouse at the top of the slide. Then we have a smaller operation down in Grand View 41 miles away.

I want to talk a little bit about the court system in Washington because I know every state differs in the way that it’s structured. I want to talk about it in the context of the number of cases that are heard, which will become relevant as we proceed further along in this presentation. We have the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Those are our reviewing courts in our state. The courts of limited jurisdiction and the Superior Courts, those are trial courts. Those are the courts that decide the dispute. The Court of Appeals and Supreme Court review the decisions of those lower courts. Actually, in some respects, Superior Court is also and oftentimes is a court of review of Courts of Limited Jurisdiction cases as well. In a minor aspect of their role, they do serve also as an appellate court.