A couple of months ago we wished upon a shooting star that Ross Bush, the new Midland County District Clerk, would put the official records online so that anyone wanting to see them wouldn't have to run the gauntlet and get strip searched as part of the Court House entry routine. In the process, we discovered that they are already available online, unfortunately it's quite expensive to use with a yearly fee of $120 plus a $0.10 per page fee, paid in advance, to view or print a document. See previously.
In that previous posting we noted that the District Clerk of Harris County (Houston) has their records online. Well now it looks like the Dallas County District Clerk's records are online too. See District Clerk Reaches Historic Milestone with Public Access to Court Records at the District Clerk's blog.
[Aside: "District Clerk's blog?" Yep. Note to Ross Bush: if you want to blow our minds, start a "District Clerk's blog" of your own.]
What you have to do to see the Dallas records online is first go here, pick the type of court, do a name search, and get the case number. Then go here and plug in the case number. Pretty nifty. And based on the sample searches I did with some very common names, it's free!
Maybe it isn't fair to compare Midland with larger cities. We may not be able to keep up with the big boys. But if we hope to be something other than an ordinary small community we should at least try to keep the gap from growing so large that we give up trying.
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