Judge Mary Wertz pauses while giving a tour of the new court office at the Brown County Courthouse and takes a moment to look around at an area that has been expanded to better protect her staff.

“It’s really just been wonderful,” she said.

Not far from Wertz hangs a wood carving on the wall that greets visitors who enter the court office through its new entrance using a ramp that is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ramp is located to the right of the courtroom now as visitors enter.

On the wood carving is a Brown Circuit Court logo that Wertz designed herself and her neighbor, who owns Homes on a Limb in Brown County, carved.

[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]

The new office rearrangement is one of several changes courthouse visitors will notice.

In the fall of 2019, Wertz applied for a court reform grant through the Indiana Office of Court Services. In January, the county received a $30,000 grant to fund security work at the courthouse, which was built in 1877.

The grant was to be used primarily to restrict public access in the court offices on the second floor and the probation office on the first floor. It was also to be used to relocate the jury room to the law library on the second floor and to convert the small meeting room into a juror restroom that is compliant with ADA.

The Brown County Commissioners also used around $30,000 from the $2 million capital improvement loan the county took out in 2018 to help cover costs of the new ramp and ADA-compliant juror restroom.

“This really couldn’t have happened without that support. It was a collaborative effort,” Wertz said.

Commissioner Diana Biddle said the upgrades have extended the life of the courthouse and have helped to take the idea of a new justice center to address space and security needs at the courthouse off the table for years to come. The county also recently purchased the former Nashville Police Department building on Hawthorne Drive to address space needs.

“What we were able to accomplish literally has given us a new lease on life in the courthouse so that between the courthouse, adding the Hawthorne Drive property, I don’t see us having to build another facility in our future,” she said.

“It’s not even on our radar.”

Biddle added that the commissioners were on board with the security improvements and helping to fund those, but also wanted to address the “elephant in the room” if construction was going to be happening: The ramp to the court office.

“We’ve been talking about this ramp for 30 or 40 years,” Biddle said.

Preserving the historic courthouse was one of Wertz’s motivations for pursuing the grant funding.

“I am a history lover myself. I felt like there was a way to do this and do it right, extend the life and I really appreciate the fact that the commissioners did jump on board with this,” she said.

Her other concern was the public entering the court and probation offices without any barriers there.

“I would walk out of my office and there would be somebody standing so close to the court employee who may have confidential matters on her desk who’s trying to do her work,” she said.

“It just wasn’t the way things should be in a courthouse or really any kind of county work environment.”

The above projects were identified as priorities by the Courthouse Security Committee and by an assessment that was completed last December by the sheriff of the Indiana Supreme Court. The upgrades also will help bring the courthouse into more compliance with the minimum courthouse standards that were adopted by the Judicial Board of Directors, Wertz said in January.

Recommendations from the assessment included using barriers between the entrance and the private work spaces of court employees in all three offices in the courthouse: clerk, court and probation.

Currently upgrades to the clerk’s office are on hold as they figure out how to best use that office space.

A majority of the construction in the courthouse wrapped up in May with the gates in the court and probation offices being installed at the end of the summer.

“I felt that both the court office and the probation office needed to be able to restrict access,” Wertz said of the gates.

“I didn’t want it to look like a wall or buffer. I just wanted to make sure that people knew they could only come in if they were permitted in and that we had control over that.”

Local contractor Steve Miller was the craftsman for the project with Doug Harden and Miller Architects designing the upgrades.

The changes

When a visitor enters the courtroom, they will see the new ramp that is blocked by a partial wall with glass on top. The glass allows for the natural sunlight to come through from the windows behind the wall.

To enter the court office, visitors will go up the new ramp and when they open the door they are greeted by court office employee Lisa Day. There is also now a wooden gate that locks and restricts visitors from entering the area where other court employees sit at their desks.

The new area also gives court employees more space in between their desks to protect them from COVID-19.

In the courtroom, the court reporter and bailiff stations have flipped. They are located where the former court office entrance used to be and that area can be restricted from visitors now, too.

The witness stand has switched sides along with where the prosecution and defense teams sit after the jail commander said he would be more comfortable with that setup, Wertz explained.

But one of the biggest differences is the addition of the new wall that blocks the ramp to the new court office. The decision to make an addition like that to the historic courtroom caused everyone some pause, Wertz said.

“Making sure that it looked right. We both had fits about that,” Wertz said of herself and Biddle.

“I was just like ‘I don’t want to see it until it’s done,’” Biddle added.

Biddle and Wertz worked together to come up with the idea of using the county and state seals along with the court logo Wertz designed on the glass.

Biddle said the mark of a “true craftsman” is that Miller was able to build a wooden wall that looked like it had been in the courtroom all along by matching other wood in the room.

The other noticeable difference in the courtroom is the fact that the wooden benches with red cushions where the public and others used to sit have been replaced with dark-colored chairs.

“One of the things that drew me to these (chairs) is the ability to change the way the seating is set up. If you need a third row you can get a third row because this is not a walk way into the office anymore,” Biddle said as she looked to the new bailiff and court reporter area.

“Of course it’s more comfortable (too).”

The benches had to be removed by a crane out the door of the courthouse on the second floor. They are now stored at the fairgrounds.

One of the benches had to be taken apart because it was wobbly, so Cameron Fox used the wood from that bench to help refurbish the Liar’s Bench that is outside of the courthouse, Biddle said.

Fox refurbished the bench for his Eagle Scout project.

“I thought it was so neat he could use one of the benches for that bench,” Wertz said.

The courtroom had a door that went into the law library, but that door now enters into the ADA compliant jury room. The former jury room was demolished and used to expand the court office space.

Wertz’s love for history is apparent in the new jury room, too.

She sold more than 700 law books from the library online since most research work is done online now, but kept the oldest ones to display on shelves above. The oldest one is from 1855 and is on the end, she said as she pointed above her.

She also plans to have old images of the courthouse as an “overriding theme” for artwork throughout the building.

The construction of the new restroom in the historic courthouse also caused everyone a pause.

“That was a concern if it was feasible to do so and make it ADA compliant in the space available because the building was built in 1877 and there’s brick on the second floor,” Wertz said of the new restroom.

“Just get to the plumbing out to the main out here. They had to dig up the whole lawn like six feet down to get to the main.”

Workers had to move the line twice because they found buried piles of brick under the grass. The grant paid for most of the plumbing in the bathroom and the excavating.

Wertz said she kept those bricks and plans to use them as book ends for the law books in the jury room.

Jurors no longer have to use steps to enter the jury room and they can still enter directly into the courtroom after deliberations.

A second door also had to be installed at the hallway entrance for the new jury room to help prevent sound from traveling outside. Wertz credited Miller with putting in a new door that, again, looks identical to the others.

Other local touches include a table in the jury room that court reporter Sherri Brown refurbished. Wertz’s husband Scott found the table at the Brown County Humane Society Barn Sale.

After Brown posted a photo of the table on Facebook, it was discovered that the table once belonged to former Brown County Schools Superintendent David Shaffer, Wertz said.

Wertz also credited Bailiff Andy Reed with stepping up and helping to move the project along. He painted the courtroom when the majority of the court calendar was on pause due to COVID-19. He also coordinated sub-contractors

“He really worked with everybody making sure we had what we needed,” Wertz said. “He stepped up.”

Using the new space

Because of delays in the court calendar due to COVID-19, the upgrades were completed months ahead of schedule. The grant funds required the construction be complete by the end of this year.

“The excitement is we did not anticipate having this finished until almost like December. We were trying to figure out how we were going to get it all done in the timeline,” Biddle said.

But on the flip side, no jury trials can currently be held in the upgraded courtroom due to the pandemic.

Currently, jury trials are being held at the Brown County Music Center. The first trial was held there in September, but not without some adjustments, like the jury deliberating in the loading dock area.

“We worked hard to really think ahead to what it was going to look like. I did a technical walk through, I did a walk through with the attorneys. Diana (Biddle) helped out as a perspective juror,” Wertz said.

“They’re having sidebars and they’re whispering, but because the acoustics are so freaking good in that building they were talking in their lowest whisper and I could hear them,” Biddle added.

A recording microphone was then set up off a wing where the judge bench was set up, so that Wertz and the attorneys could have their bench discussions without anyone hearing.

As far as when jury trials could resume at the courthouse, Biddle said it would not be until the beginning of next year. The music center is looking at March for booking shows.

Wertz also applied for and received a $33,000 Indiana Criminal Justice Institute grant, which will cover security and sound technician expenses while trials are held at the music center.

“I am happy about that because I certainly don’t have it in my budget to pay for the sound and the security,” she said.

The grant will also cover extra personal protection equipment for jurors. Each juror receives a tub with their clipboard, paper, hand sanitizer, masks and pens that the bailiff collects while wearing gloves at the end of each day.

As far as when jury trials can resume in the courthouse, Wertz said that will not happen until the social distancing mandates are lifted.

“I don’t feel comfortable locking 14 people in a room that isn’t big enough to take care of their concerns and telling them they can’t come out until they have a decision,” she said.

“That’s just not going to happen.”