Tuscaloosa County DA’s office adopts new case management system to speed up cases

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (WBRC) - Imagine being the victim of a crime, then waiting years for the suspect to actually go to trial. It’s something that can often happen, and now the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney’s (DA) Office is working to prevent that.

The office is training under a new system called “Spartan” which is designed to move cases from arrest to trial more efficiently. They’re

Training began on Wednesday, July 15 with intent to launch the system on Monday, July 20 and training continuing until Tuesday, July 21.

The process doesn’t necessarily look exciting, but those who work at the office say it’s huge. Officer Manager Lauren Sommers described the new system as “life-changing.”

“I think our current system is easy to use. It’s a good system,” said Sommers, but there’s things the old system couldn’t do that the new system can. “We don’t have reporting capabilities like this system is going to give us. Right now, our attorney’s have no way of seeing open pending cases.”

That’s something District Attorney Hayes Webb said needed to change.

“It’s really going to take us to the next level,” said Webb. “Right now, if you were to ask me for a list of all the cases we have, we are incapable of doing that. In order to access any case, we have to have a name to go in and search it, but there’s no library we can just look at and see all of the people.”

Webb said the new system will allow them to see all of the cases, and not only see them, but organize them. That will help with efficiency and getting cases on the docket faster, according to Webb.

“Imagine, now we can see our cases, we can age them,” explained Webb. “In some of these cases, they date back to 2009.”

2009. 17 years of an old system about to get swallowed up with new technology.

“It will give our attorneys an opportunity to ‘hey, I got this case and it’s been pending for a long time can we add it to the docket,” said Sommers.

Webb said the new case management system cost $121,000 with the yearly on-going cost coming in at $20,000.

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