§ 30.012.Use of Communication Equipment in Certain Proceedings

A 2001 provision, amended in 2023, and its conditions are more restrictive than the heading suggests.

With the agreement of the parties, a trial judge may order that a hearing of a preliminary matter or witness testimony at trial be conducted by electronic means — satellite, closed-circuit television, or any other two-way method available to the parties, approved by the court, and capable of visually and audibly recording the proceedings.

Four requirements on the method, and two-way is the one that matters: a witness must be able to see and hear the courtroom, not merely be seen by it.

Subsection (b) is the significant limit. Witness testimony at trial in a district or statutory county court may be conducted electronically only if the witness is deposed before the commencement of the trial. And neither the court nor any party may waive that requirement if any party objects.

So a single objecting party can insist on a pre-trial deposition of any witness who will appear by video. The safeguard is against a witness whose credibility a jury will assess on a screen having never been examined in person.

Subsection (c): the court shall consider the transmission accurate and include it in the record unless it determines otherwise.

Subsections (d) to (f) allocate cost. A remote party provides compatible equipment at its own expense and may record at its own expense; a copy of a videotaped proceeding is available from the clerk on payment of a reasonable amount; and the court's own expenses are assessed and collected as court costs.