THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 2, 1994 TAG: 9409010228
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Jury duty in Virginia Beach is now a lot like Lotto.
If your number comes up, the payoff is almost instantaneous.
A new computer program gives the Clerk of the Circuit Court the ability to summon 600 jurors a month to hear civil and criminal cases.
It can write them checks after each day of service and each check is signed on the dotted line by the computer and ready to cash.
``A juror is paid $30 a day if they stay or just show up,'' said Mike Davy, deputy clerk of Circuit Court who, with Matt Benefiel, court administrator, helped select the streamlined system. ``They get their checks on their way out the door.''
Prior to July 1 Virginia Beach jurors were paid $20 per appearance and received their checks in the mail from the City Treasurer's office four to six weeks after serving.
The new program, known as JMS, for Jury Management System, was pressed into service July 1 under a $15,000 grant from the Virginia Supreme Court and a $2,500 contribution from the city.
The main reason for doing it, said Davy, was cutting costs. The system bypasses the City Treasurer's office and eliminates the need to mail out thousands of checks, which amount to $274,000 to $275,000 a year.
It's all done with a few judicious taps on the keyboard of an office computer under the watchful eye of people like Mary F. Brewer, the court's jury specialist.
Under the old system, jurors were selected from local voter registration lists and they were selected by hand.
Then, along came the computer age and a change in the state law.
Juror selection then had to be made from voters and lists of licensed operators furnished by the state's Department of Motor Vehicles.
The lists had to be sent to the city's data processing department, then picked randomly by computer, said Davy.
Once the Circuit Court Clerk's office instituted its own system, the prospective jury lists were plugged into its own computer and names were selected randomly. The new system also issues jury summonses, schedules jurors for specific hearing dates, notes absences, keeps a running tab of jury expenses and deletes from the list the names of deceased people or people who have moved from the city.
Jurors selected by the JMS program can call the clerk's office to find out when they are to serve. A peek at the computer display panel tells court clerks when jurors are to report.
When they appear in the court building they wear identification tags that can be read by bar scanners that mark them present, said Davy. This transaction also is noted in the computer, which prepares the checks to pay for their daily services.
The new system eliminates the need for novice jurors to spend entire days - much of it sitting around in musty, crowded rooms, thumbing through old magazines - undergoing orientation.
Those selected now come to the ground floor of the court complex, sit in a quiet, carpeted auditorium and get their orientation lectures through a video system.
Circuit Court judges are no longer directly involved in this orientation process, said Davy.
``I don't think many jurisdictions in the state have the capability for this,'' said Benefiel. ILLUSTRATION: Photos by PETER D. SUNDBERG
Mike Davy, left, deputy clerk of Circuit Court, and Matt Benefiel,
court administrator, helped select the streamlined computer program
that selects 600 jury candidates a month to hear civil and criminal
cases in Virginia Beach.
Mary Brewer, the court's jury specialist, scans a card that,
eventually, will be printed out as a check to a person sittng on a
jury. ``They get their checks on their way out the door,'' says
Davy.
by CNB