Software to help Grant County court

EPHRATA - People dodging jury duty may get a surprise in the mail.

The Grant County clerk's office bought a new software program to identify people who don't show up to jury duty.

Grant County Superior Court Clerk Kimberly Allen said out of the 1,000 summons sent out every month about 400 people appear for the summons and about 200 people end up in the jury pool.

"The other 200 request to be excused," she said. "We typically call 55 to 65 per jury trial and if it's a high profile case the judges might request that we call in more jurors."

The program will identify the non-responders and select some to receive a court order to appear. If the person doesn't respond a warrant might be issued.

"A jury summons is like being drafted," Superior Court Judge Evan Sperline stated. "It's not optional; failure to appear is a misdemeanor crime, punishable by up to 90 days in jail. Because we're only receiving responses from 40 percent of the jurors, we are running low."

Allen said the computer program will start in January, but they're going to do the work by hand until then. The first round of court orders will be sent out on Sept. 12.

The clerk's office is summoning a portion of the jury pool because summoning every missing juror would be too much work, she said.

"It's a volume issue," she said. "There are at least 300 (non-responders) a month and we can't bring everyone in."

The term of jury service is one month. During that time a juror would typically report once or twice, for a few days, Sperline stated.

The previous program became outdated and only one vendor, who is planning to retire this year, could fix the system, Allen stated.