Associate District Judge Lance Schneiter was the guest speaker at a recent meeting of the Kingfisher Lions Club.

Schneiter discussed the difficulties the novel coronavirus and subsequent shutdown of everything statewide earlier this year affected proceedings at the Kingfisher County Courthouse and beyond.

It was ruled during the shutdown that courtrooms were to be closed down for a finite amount of time, but that required proceedings could be handled on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the sitting judge.

“I viewed that as we needed to be very careful,” said Schneiter. “Crime doesn’t stop. Emergency matters for children don’t stop.

“So we couldn’t just stop,” he said.

As general proceedings continued to be shut down into May, Schneiter said rescheduling hearings and other proceedings became the real challenge for him and the courthouse staff.

“It was hard to reschedule everything than it would have been to do the actual work in the first place,” he said.

Schneiter added he felt it was important to him to make sure everyone - literally - had their day in court in as timely manner as possible.

“The rights of someone sitting in jail (waiting on a hearing) are incredibly important,” he said. “But to balance that (with current restrictions) is not easy.”

Schneiter was introduced by Annette Parham, program chair.