Courts use law to ensure jurors serve their time

BOISE – Andrew Pfeiffer’s first day last week as a computer programmer for Ada County started in court, as a juror for two days in a criminal case.

He came away impressed.

“Before I came in, I had the same negative feeling, like ‘Why me?’ ” he said. “But I went through the process, and it was very nice and very friendly. I’m in the same building as work, and my boss was cool about it.”

Not all Idaho residents feel like Pfeiffer, however. Despite a juror’s important role in jurisprudence, the hassles of fulfilling that duty leave too many looking for ways out. Arranging for baby sitters, fear of leaving co-workers in the lurch and simply forgetting to show up has resulted in a rising number of no-shows.

One court has seen as much as 30 percent of those summoned skipping out. That’s why judges and jury commissioners are mobilizing to stop the summons scofflaws, according to a statewide survey of court officials provided to the Associated Press.

In some cases, courts are offering day-care services while others are being noticeably tougher — resorting to a barrage of telephone calls, fines and even jail time to produce juries that hold a person’s life, liberty or property in their hands.

Surprisingly, court officials and even initially reluctant jurors agree, the experience typically turns out to be interesting and rewarding.

“The vast amount of people consider it the highest duty they’ve got,” said 2nd District Judge Jeff M. Brudie of Lewiston. “But showing up late or not at all is still contempt of court. By statute, that can mean a $100 fine and three days in jail.”

Idaho law requires residents to serve up to 10 days of jury duty and be available for as long as six months of service within any two-year period. Each county determines how much time they will ask of the juror, who is paid $10 a day and gas money.

The Idaho courts use lists of registered voters and driver’s licenses to select jury pools. They send out a summons which must be returned. If people continue to ignore letters and phone calls, they face penalties.

Brudie and staff are trying to blunt the rise of truant jurors. About 500 people are chosen each month for the court.

“We were seeing 25-30 percent no-shows,” he said. “It was quite a noticeable increase from 10 percent before.”

Brudie said the court increased its calls to jurors on trial day and employed the media to get its message out. The instance of no-shows has dropped back down. Most of them merely forget the trial date after receiving the summons weeks before, he said.

The courts will work with the jurors if they have good reasons ahead of time for why they cannot serve, Brudie said. They usually are added to the next month’s jury pool.

“We haven’t jailed anybody for missing court yet,” he said.

The same cannot be said at the Bonneville County Courthouse in Idaho Falls.

The court used to have an average of 20 no-shows when it called 60 potential jurors, Jury Commissioner Ranae Jennings said. So, Jennings’ office would have to call more people to finally gather enough people for a jury.

Now Magistrate Jerry Meyers sends officers out to find the no-shows and then parades them before the jurors who did appear and sentences them to a night in jail.

“So, needless to say, it has helped immensely with John Doe public, hearing through the media and knowing that they just cannot ignore it,” Jennings said. “We now only have an average of four to five failed-to-appears for trial.”

Bannock County Trial Court Administrator Suzanne Johnson in Pocatello said the rate of no shows in the last half-dozen trials have ranged from 4 percent to about 12 percent.

Ada County Jury Commissioner Marji Shepherd’s office heads to the phones on the morning of a trial date, and that goes a long way to reducing absentees.

One morning recently, the court had a pool of 55 jurors scheduled for court duty, Shepherd said. By 8:45 a.m., only 45 had shown up. After a series of calls, all but three were present.

“One of the problems the courts have is they don’t make that call,” she said. “It’s a little extra work, but boy, it pays off at the end.”

About 10,000 prospective jurors pass through the Ada County court system each year. Shepherd goes a long way toward freeing them of the daily cares which may prompt them to ignore trial day.

She said the court instituted day care in 1995, and is the first in Idaho to provide the summons over the Internet. It pays for taxis for the elderly and even offers the jurors snacks in the morning.

“I think we as administrators of the jury system have a huge responsibility to citizens that comes down to reducing the hardship,” Shepherd said. “When we started, we had them for two months, then one month, then two weeks, then one week. Our lives are busy. If you give them a short term of service, you can get them in.”

First District Judge Charles Hosack in Coeur d’Alene said the rate of no-shows has not increased beyond 10 percent, but the amount of effort the staff expends to field a jury is growing. Many just don’t understand what jury duty entails or that they are required by law to participate, he said.

“The public is still able and willing, but it may take the court system a little more time and effort, and even education, to obtain the same level of cooperation that we had in the past,” Hosack said.