Maryland Court Cases

If you are looking for records of Maryland court cases, they are quite accessible today. Though public records have been kept since even before the War of Independence, proper systems have taken a long time to evolve. In the early years after Independence, the federal government kept its own set of records, such as federal criminal records, and the local governments maintained their own public records.

Courthouses were responsible for maintaining critical information such as those on marriages, births and deaths, besides their own civil and criminal case records. Earlier, not even deaths and births were certain to be recorded with courthouses. Marriages that were solemnized in churches were not recorded. You had to thus search high and low to find what you needed.

That made it hard to find records concerning the legal history of people, properties, companies and so on. So, it was almost impossible to find out whether or not someone had a criminal background or not, and that was because it was simply too difficult to check a person’s background.

Over the decades, it became apparent that there was a desperate need for keeping more organized and structured public records. It soon became a requirement for all births, deaths and marriages to be recorded with the local courthouse. Court cases continued to be kept at the courthouses as before, except that they were shared with the federal government.

Up until 1960, courthouses were responsible for maintaining critical information on things such as criminal court records and civil cases. In 1960, the U.S. Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act and things began to change from there on. This Act made public data legally available to the general public. You can therefore access case records (or for that matter all public records) relating to people that you want to access. There are some cases in which the judiciary may, showing good cause as legislated, keep the records sealed from the public. These are a minority of cases though.

You can easily search records of court cases for property disputes and ownership, criminal cases, divorce cases or any other kinds of litigation. To find your records of court cases, you can go down to the courthouse, call the authorities there or access them online. As for the information you can access, it includes the names of litigating parties, the city, case number, date of birth, trial date, charge and case disposition in detail for all Maryland court cases in the Circuit and District Courts.

The amount of historical data may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, based on when the automation was first introduced in the records management system, and how it has evolved in a particular jurisdiction. Do remember that accessing these case records is free.

In Maryland, the judiciary offers information about civil judgments and decrees recorded and indexed in the District Courts of Maryland on a subscription basis at http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp. Otherwise, going through official channels may sometimes be very difficult. It is often far easier to get what you need from private online archives. There are quite a few options on the Internet today and this has become a growing and favorite option for anyone searching for these case records.