Almost half of Fulton County’s summoned jurors skip out on their duty, failing to show up for roll calls or offer any explanation.
Of those, it seems half don’t respond to threats either.
That’s the implication, so far, of a crackdown launched by fed-up judges last month, tackling a costly problem that has long plagued Fulton and one which the judges have historically done little about.
Last month, the Superior Court administrator’s office sent nearly 15,000 letters to no-shows warning them of contempt of court charges, $500 fines and 20-day jail stays if they didn’t reschedule or explain themselves. So far, 7,185 people, or 48 percent, have called or written back, according to court-provided data.
The top three reasons given for skipping: “I never got the summons,” “I traveled out of state,” and “I moved.”
It’s too early to gauge the success of the effort, court administrator Yolanda Lewis said, but the letters have already put a dent in the problem.
“We’re excited about the response, because that means people are taking this seriously — that this is not an invitation,” Lewis said.
About 5,000 more letters will go out at the end of June, she said, and in mid-July Phase 2 begins with sheriff’s deputies bearing orders to appear before a judge dispatched to doorsteps. For those who still duck the courthouse, a judge will issue an arrest warrant.
In years past, the county’s solution has been to double up on mailing summonses, which has resulted in additional postage, printing and manpower costs of about $2,000 per month. Judges tracked down no-shows on occasion, forcing them to sit through trials without compensation, but not on a consistent basis.
The practice has resulted in a culture where jury duty is shrugged off en masse, experts say. Compounded with challenges faced by urban areas nationwide — such as transient populations and low-income workers who can’t afford weeks away from jobs — it’s led to a no-show rate significantly higher than the national average and surrounding jurisdictions.
A 2007 study by the National Center for State Courts found an average nonresponse/failure to appear rate of about 15 percent for jurisdictions of half a million people or more.
DeKalb County’s average failure to appear rate was 17.5 percent last year, according to Superior Court Administrator Cathy McCumber. Cobb reports a rate of about 25 percent. In Gwinnett, it’s 9 percent for both Superior and State courts, the jury manager said.
Sheila Sasser said she got a taste of Fulton jurors’ lackadaisical attitudes when she was summoned to serve on a grand jury 12 years ago. A Roswell resident at the time, she was nervous about going downtown, so her husband took off work three days per week for nine weeks to accompany her, she said.
Several people didn’t show up the first day. One man slept through orientation, then when they broke for lunch, never returned.
Other jurors were outraged, but nothing was done to haul the man back in, Sasser said. Now living in Forsyth County, Sasser said that if she still lived in Fulton, she would blow off a jury summons, too.
“None of us really wanted to be there, even though it is our civic duty,” she said. “And yet, here this person was, and he took it upon himself that he wasn’t going to come back, and he was going to go do what he wanted to do.”
Attorney and jury consultant Denise de La Rue said reasons range for dodging duty. For some, there are job challenges and child care issues that the $25 per day paid for jury duty won’t cover.
Another problem, de La Rue said she suspects, is that Fulton is using a lot of out-of-date addresses, mainly for low-income residents who move more often. The effect is jury boxes stacked with white, affluent jurors, she said.
That argument came up in 2006 during the death penalty trial of courthouse killer Brian Nichols. His attorneys charged that Fulton’s no-show rate was so out of hand that, with minorities underrepresented, their client wouldn’t be tried by a jury of his peers, a constitutional violation.
“It makes a difference,” said mathematician and jury consultant Jeffrey Martin, who helped in the Nichols challenge, which the judge rejected. “Whereas the whole jury list might be reflective of the county, the people who actually show up, who respond to the summons, who actually get into the jury room, that doesn’t represent the county.”
About the Author
