DOWNTOWN TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) — More than 1,200 court records were affected during an 89-second window following a software upgrade failure in Leon County’s public safety computer system, county staff told commissioners Monday.
WATCH FULL REPORT BELOW:
Leon County court computer failure affected more than 1,200 records in 89 seconds
County staff, the chief judge, state attorney and members of the public came before commissioners to explain what happened and what still needs to be fixed.
The problems followed an upgrade to the county’s public safety software system. The system was shut down Aug. 18. The problem was isolated August 27th, and the upgrade was rolled back to the old JIS system August 30th.
Court officials are still verifying records and closing erroneous cases, including “ghost cases” that do not actually exist but appeared on people’s records.
Leon County Commission Chairman Christian Caban addressed the gravity of the situation.
“One of the worst things that the government can do is wrongfully deprive someone of their constitutional rights or their liberty,” Caban said.
Public Defender Jessica Yeary described the scope of the problem for residents.
“Criminal cases that were attached to people in this community that did not exist,” Yeary said.
Yeary told commissioners her team could spend a long time manually reviewing records to make sure people’s criminal histories are not compromised.
“My lawyers are gonna go through every single case that we can identify from that list from what has happened since the 18th to make sure that our clients are protected and that their records are protected, but this is going to take significant amount of time to fix,” Yeary said.
Pastor Gregory James, an advocate for people who have been incarcerated, said he understands firsthand what a clerical error can cost. He says one kept him in jail for an extra nine months.
“What I do know is that whenever there’s error, it has impact. And the reason I know that is because I experienced it myself. You know, going to R&D, which is receiving and discharging, dressing out to leave, only to discover that there’s an error. And I had to redress and put back on prison clothes to go back into a facility to spend more time until that error was corrected. It has an impact,” James said.
Commissioners are now looking beyond the technical fix. They want to know how the vendor responsible for the upgrade can be held accountable, and asked the county attorney to include in an after-action report what options the county has — including for potential legal fallout from the errors.
The work to verify and correct the more than 1,200 affected records continues. Commissioners will receive a status report at their Sept. 15 commission meeting. The after-action report is expected to come before commissioners in November.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
Want to see more local news? Visit the WTXL ABC 27 Website.
Stay in touch with us anywhere, anytime.