97th Judicial District Court (Clay County) — Standing Order… — TX · BenchPath

97th Judicial District Court (Clay County) — Standing Order Regarding Evidence

High confidence· verified September 21, 2026Trial Exhibits97th Judicial District Court Standing Order Regarding Evidence (Archer, Clay and Montague Counties) — TOPICs reg. doc 1041.

Summary

A standing order of the 97th Judicial District Court governing the format of audio, video and other electronic media exhibits so they can be uploaded to and opened by the Court of Appeals, with file-size limits, labeling, and text-searchable PDF requirements.

Applies to

Applies to media and electronic exhibits offered before the 97th Judicial District Court in Clay County. Procedural information only; not legal advice.

Requirement

97TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT ARCHER, CLAY and MONTAGUE COUNTIES STANDING ORDER REGARDING EVIDENCE Effective immediately, the following order shall apply to all parties when seeking to introduce an audio, video, CD, DVD, or other electronic media storage devices. The Court ORDERS that the sponsoring part of such media exhibits shall ensure that it is in a formal that may be uploaded and accepted by the appropriate Court of Appeals applying its guidelines at the time of the admission of the exhibit. In the event that the exhibit is not in a format acceptable to the appropriate Court of Appeals, the sponsoring party shall convert the item to an acceptable format. IT IS FURTHER ORDRED that audio exhibits may not exceed 100 MB in any single file. Video files may not exceed 5 GB in any single file. In the event that the audio or video file exceeds these size limits, the file shall be divided into separate files that do not exceed the stated limits and shall be labeled (both on the outside of the exhibit and the file name on the media storage device) with the following format as an example: "Exhibit ____--Defendant Smith Statement—1 of 2" Further, only segments offered as an exhibit can be on the audio or video media admitted as an exhibit; e.g., for a disc of jail phone calls with 50 calls, if only certain calls are being offered, then only those calls to be offered should be copied onto a separate disk and the separate disk offered as an exhibit. IT IS FUTHER ORDERED that all oversized or enlarged exhibits shall be accompanied by 8-1//2 x 11 copies, with a marked exhibit sticker on the front, which the Court Reporter shall retain for the record on appeal. Any exhibits that the party desires to utilize in an oversized form shall be an exact replica of the exhibit that was admitted. The oversized or enlarged exhibit shall only be utilized for demonstrative purposes to the fact finder; however, the 8-1/2 x 11 copy will become the official exhibit for record purposes. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that each computer file of a text document must be submitted in text searchable Portable Document Format (PDF), compatible with the latest version of Abode Reader. The computer file must not be password protected, encrypted, or protected by rights management. All scanned exhibits shall be made searchable using optical-character-recognition (OCR) software, such as Abode Acrobat. In the even that a case is on appeal and the Court of Appeals cannot open an exhibit that was admitted, the sponsoring party that offered the exhibit will be responsible for providing the Court Reporter with the exhibit in an acceptable format. Signed this the 6th day of January 2023. [signature] Judge Jack A McGaughey, 97th Judicial District Court

Source of truth

97th Judicial District Court (Archer, Clay and Montague Counties) Standing Order Regarding Evidence. When seeking to introduce an audio, video, CD, DVD, or other electronic media storage device, the sponsoring party shall ensure it is in a format that may be uploaded and accepted by the appropriate Court of Appeals under its guidelines, converting it if necessary. Audio exhibits may not exceed 100

Official source: TOPICs — Texas local rules registry (topics.txcourts.gov)
Source health: Healthy · checked October 24, 2026
Effective date: January 10, 2023
Last verified: September 21, 2026benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p11-2026-09-21

Reviewer note: Composed 2026-09-06 from the TOPICs custody scan (Clay's text copy read in full; identical to Archer 1036). Tri-county 97th District Court order registered per county (Archer 1036, Clay 1041, Montague 1048); composed on the Clay 97th District Court row. [RECOMPOSED 2026-09-21 (corpus-0920 P7, digital-layer lane): the full text of the registered file (sha256 81c799f26666..., 2 pages) replaces the earlier 864-character abstract. Method: pypdfium2 text layer reflowed page-aware, cross-checked word-by-word against PyMuPDF (0 substantive difference(s), 0 page-furniture), owner-corpus candidate sentences 100% (12/12) matched, 0 running header/footer line(s) removed, no U+FFFD/U+FFFE/form-feed debris. NOT yet checked page by page against the render, so confidence is medium with an open re-verification task; flip to high when a reviewer has read every page against the PDF. benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p7-2026-09-21] [BY-EYE CHECK 2026-09-21 (corpus-0920 P11): every page of the registered file (sha256 81c799f26666..., 2 page(s)) read against the rendered PDF; file-stamp, caption and signature-block defects of the text layer corrected from the render; confidence lifted to high. benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p11-2026-09-21]