MSBA members regularly use Maryland Judiciary Case Search, a website that provides public access to the case records of the Maryland Judiciary. Members have shared questions and concerns about functionality updates, search option changes, and recent error messages. Below are some resources and information about the website that may be helpful in future searches.

Recent changes to the law have limited the ability to access some records. The Case Search Notices page online explains several of the changes and reasons why results do not always show up:

https://mdcourts.gov/casesearch2/notice

Some of the recent changes include:

  1. Default search to exact full names only. For partial name searches, a user must input the first two characters of a last name and at least one character of a first name, followed by %
  2. CAPTCHA technology has been added to prevent robots and automated systems from accessing Case Search, so users must now click through to confirm they are not an automated system.
  3. Suppressed cases: Due to the expansion of expunged cases by HB1336 (2020) and some other criminal cases being protected from public view (HB83(2020) and SB314 (2020)), many cases are now suppressed in Case Search. (A user would have to go to a courthouse kiosk or request information directly from a courthouse clerk to access some of those cases, if permitted).

Some users received notice of an “unexpected error” for suppressed cases, which has caused confusion. MSBA reached out to the Judicial Information Systems (JIS) on this issue, and this wording will soon be changed to remove the word “Error” from the search result.

Members also reported receiving error notices for a specific jurisdiction. Each jurisdiction has its own, separate case management system and if that local system is down, case search will not return results. Usually, JIS tries to post a notice at the header of Case Search when this occurs, as soon as they are aware of the issue, and then they work with the local jurisdiction to get systems up and running again.

Please share any questions or comments with us at feedback@msba.org as we continue to work on this issue.