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NEWS FROM U.S. DISTRICT COURT 04-06-2015

Monday, April 6, 2015

NEW MAGISTRATE JUDGE IN RAPID CITY: The Court is pleased to announce that on March 6th Judge Daneta Wollmann was sworn in to serve as United States Magistrate Judge in Rapid City. Judge Wollmann is a graduate of Purdue University and the University of South Dakota School of Law. Prior to her service with the Court, Judge Wollmann was a partner at Banks, Johnson, Kappelman and Becker. Judge Wollmann also served as an Assistant United States Attorney and as a Deputy States Attorney in Beadle County.

 


PRESENTENCE REPORTS: We're off to a great start! Over 1,200 presentence report (PSR) related documents have already been filed in CM/ECF since the Probation Office began filing PSRs last October. Attorneys can currently use the following events to file PSR related documents in CM/ECF:
  • Notice of No Objections to Presentence Report (no document is attached)
  • Sealed Letter(s) of Support
  • Sealed Objections to Presentence Report
  • Sealed Sentencing Memorandum (if it contains c onfidential info in the PSR)
  • Sealed Victim Impact Statement(s)

Attorneys who file documents using any of these sealed events MUST manually serve copies of the documents on the appropriate parties. Attorneys cannot access sealed documents filed in CM/ECF. Only court personnel in the Clerks Office, the Probation Office, and the chambers offices can access sealed documents filed in CM/ECF.

ALL allocution statements must now be delivered to the Clerks Office for filing. Attorneys and the Probation Office can no longer file allocution statements in CM/ECF.

 


ACCESSING RESTRICTED DOCUMENTS IN CM/ECF: Access to some documents filed in CM/ECF is restricted to applicable parties, meaning either a certain party or parties in a case or all of the participants in a case. Restricted documents include, but are not limited to, presentence reports, addenda to presentence reports, and documents filed in Social Security appeal cases.

To access a restricted document from a document number hyperlink in an e-mail Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF), the applicable party's attorney must FIRST be logged into CM/ECF using their ECF login and password for electronically filing documents (not their PACER login and password for looking at documents). The attorney can then click on the document number hyperlink in the NEF to access the restricted document. If the attorney is not logged into CM/ECF prior to clicking on the document number hyperlink, he or she will be shown a message that says You do not have permission to view this document. An attorney will not be charged PACER access fees the first time he or she accesses a restricted document. However, anyone who subsequently accesses the restricted document using the same attorneys ECF login and password will be required to pay the applicable PACER access fees (currently 10 cents per page).

SECURE CM/ECF PASSWORDS: To help protect against hackers, in June 2013 CM/ECF began requiring users to create secure passwords. If you have not yet created a secure CM/ECF password, please do so the next time you log into CM/ECF by clicking on Utilities on the blue menu bar and clicking on Maintain Your Password. Secure passwords must be at least eight characters long and include both uppercase and lowercase alphabetic characters and at least one digit or special character (e.g., 0 - 9, @, #, $, %, &, *, +). Be sure to keep a record of your new password and then save it by clicking on the Submit button.