Investigation prompts municipalities to post court data online

A media investigation led to three South Carolina cities and towns posting court data online, The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported.

The investigation found that three of the region’s largest municipalities, which handle more than 100,000 cases a year, were not posting data on their Web sites. The investigation arose when a newspaper filed an open records request for court data dating back to Jan. 2007 and all three jurisdictions responded with incomplete information.

The results prompted authorities to post court data from Jan. 1, 2007 to March 31, 2010 on a easily searchable database, much like other counties and municipalities in the area already do. 

The court data started going up on the web April 5.