Judges Cracking Down On No-Show Potential Jurors
By: Brittany Escobar
Updated: November 20, 2012
Before jumping to conclusions they are taking steps to make sure these no show jurors aren't because of bad addresses.
After the October no-shows that delayed some trials Judge William Sowder said they were going to get down to the bottom of it.
He says there were some bad addresses but now that's something they are taking a closer look at.
He says their warning message of avoiding jury duty seemed to help a but the juror number is still not where it needs to be.
Judge Sowder says our jurors need to reflect our community and everyone needs to show up if summoned.
Now it's up to the judges and district clerk to look at the information and find ways to most effectively use those citizens who are summoned.
"We need to be about making sure that the people who are not showing up did in fact get a good summons and then just thumbed their nose at us.
We know that a lot of people have bad addresses, we know people move all the time, the US Postal Service has a lot of paperwork they need to move and the timing in which they do that is not conducive to our job as getting jurors up here.
So we want to filter all that through and see if we can really get down to the nitty gritty and find out who's getting these notices, but not showing up.
We don't want to get after anybody that didn't have though opportunity to show up because they moved and they were in good faith," said Sowder.
Now if someone doesn't show up for jury duty they could face up to a $1,000 fine.
