TOM FINNEGAN / TFINNEGAN@STARBULLETIN.COM Ernest Barreira, deputy chief administrator for the Circuit Court, stops on the front steps of the Kauai Judiciary Complex, a $42 million project scheduled to open to the public Aug. 22.

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Modernized new
Kauai courthouse
has high-tech luster

LIHUE » The new Judiciary Complex is going to bring Kauai's Circuit Court into the 21st century.

The three-story, nearly 113,000-square-foot facility, which will be dedicated tomorrow and opened to the public Aug. 22, has technology and security provisions unlike anything else on the Garden Isle or in the state, for that matter.

Moving from a building built in 1938 -- where pretrial detainees and the public literally run into each other -- will be quite a transition. The $42 million complex will also combine all the district courts on Kauai.

"The substantial amount of money was spent on technology," said Ernest Barreira, deputy chief administrator for the Circuit Court. "We're moving a very unsophisticated operation into a very sophisticated building."

Every nook in the structure contains a computer or a security gadget, from the tiny keyhole cameras used to see who is trying to access secure areas, to the huge projection screens in each courtroom for evidence from computer terminals.

Computer monitors cover the courtroom, from the judge's bench to the witness stand. And detainees have their own entry and exits from court, through an entirely secure "green zone," Barreira said, that links the basement entrance and holding cells to each courtroom.

In areas where the detainees, staff and the public might converge, panic-type buttons were installed which send a signal to sheriffs of a potential problem. And cameras, more than 150 of them, line almost every ceiling in the building.

It is a far cry from Kauai's Hanalei District Court, where barefooted 20-somethings paid camping violations and, last year, a man walked out of court and dodged sheriffs in the field across the Kuhio Highway after losing his argument against a 30-day jail sentence.

But, Barreira joked, people probably won't fight jury duty so much.