Editorial: Cleaning up court records

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 | 7:09 a.m.

The Nevada Supreme Court used a recent decision on a Las Vegas child sexual assault case to illustrate what the justices say is an increasing, and unacceptable, number of clerical errors in the written judgments issued by lower courts.

"Written judgments containing errors are being presented to this court with increasing frequency," Justice John Maupin wrote in the 5-2 decision issued Thursday for a case in which District Judge John McGroarty's written and oral judgments conflicted.

The court upheld John Ledbetter's 2003 conviction on 26 sexual assault counts stemming from the decadelong abuse of a girl. But the justices remanded the lower court's written judgment to McGroarty for clarification and corrections.

For example, the written judgment said Ledbetter was convicted on a guilty plea, when in fact he was convicted by a jury. And McGroarty's written judgment says the prison terms would run concurrently - which means at the same time - but in the oral sentencing of Ledbetter in open court McGroarty said they would run consecutively.

Discrepancies in the judgment were not the issues Ledbetter sought to address in his appeal, and such errors are not isolated to McGroarty's courtroom, the Supreme Court's decision says. "We take this opportunity to express our concern respecting the increasing number of clerical errors appearing in written judgments of conviction filed in the district courts," Maupin wrote in the court's decision.

"They appear to be nothing more than inattentive drafting that could be easily avoided by a more careful review of the document," the justices said. "Such errors needlessly inject uncertainty into criminal proceedings and their correction constitutes a waste of judicial resources."

The written documentation of criminal proceedings provide the only enduring record of a person's conviction and details of his crime and his sentence. If any part of that documentation isn't accurate, it can cause confusion that casts doubt on proceedings that we expect to be as impartial and factual as possible - especially in cases involving serious crimes and life prison terms.

District Court judges undoubtedly juggle very challenging calendars, but that is no excuse for making the types of errors detailed by the Supreme Court. These judges need to read more carefully the paperwork they submit.