The Florida Supreme Court could decide whether judges should be allowed to hold hearings by videoconference in cases involving the involuntary commitment of mentally ill people under the state’s Baker Act.
Kathleen Smith, the public defender in southwest Florida’s 20th Judicial Circuit, asked the Supreme Court last week to take up the issue in a Lee County dispute. That dispute stems from a decision allowing a judge and a magistrate to skip travel to receiving facilities to hold evidentiary hearings on whether patients should be involuntarily committed, according to a Sept. 28 ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal. The decision opened to door to video hearings.
