Benton County to Retire 'Jury Wheel' in 2007
Last updated Wednesday, December 27, 2006 7:42 PM CST in News
By Robin Mero
The Morning News
BENTONVILLE -- Benton County Circuit Court is phasing out its "jury wheel," a bingo-style aluminum cylinder filled with numbered chips, in favor of laptop computers loaded with jury management software.
For years, circuit clerks have spun the metal wheels during jury selection, pulling out chips with numbers that correspond to potential jurors.
"Number 14," the clerk would call out, for instance, checking a list to find the matching name: "Joe Smith."
"Smith" would step to the jury box to be scrutinized by attorneys, who decide whether he's suitable for their case.
As antiquated as the jury wheel seems, as recently as 1990 names were drawn from a cigar box.
But Benton County Circuit Clerk Brenda DeShields purchased the new jury management software package this year for $4,300.
She's been using it in her office to generate names for the quarterly jury pool, but recently she twice used the program in the courtroom for individual jury selection. Since jury selection is simpler for civil trials, she's trying it there and will later move onto criminal, she said.
Washington County traded in its "jury wheel" two years ago, said Circuit Clerk Bette Stamps, and the new software system works like a dream.
A list of registered voters is downloaded each year from the state Secretary of State's office. Addresses and telephone numbers are already included. The software package prepares labels for mailing and even calculates juror pay.
"When I first started working here (in 1979), we hand-wrote all this. It took us a full day just to draw the panel for the term, and one to two weeks to prepare notices," Stamps said. "Now we can have it all done within a couple of days."
Each county prepares jury lists a little differently. Benton County has about 7,000 names to work with, DeShields said. Every quarter, 750 names are drawn. When a judge needs a jury, he tells DeShields how many to summon from that list of 750 -- typically 25 to 30 for a low-profile civil case and perhaps more than twice as many for a weighty criminal case.
The software package can flag the names of those who served on a jury and drop them to the bottom of the list, so they are less likely to be called, she said.
In Washington County, each of the five circuit judges who conduct jury trials has a dedicated deputy clerk to use for jury selection.
In Benton County, DeShields has chosen deputy clerk Kathy Cartwright to serve as jury coordinator. Cartwright will take a laptop into the courtroom and participate in the selection process. She will also field calls from jurors regarding their planned appointments, vacations and other conflicts -- and help with payroll.
All five Benton County courtrooms are now wireless ready, DeShields said. She's also still shopping for software to make court records available on the Internet. Since July 2003, all filed documents are being scanned in preparation.
Washington County began offering a subscription service for court records in 2004. Files dating back to the early 1990s are available.
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Still way behind wrote on Dec 28, 2006 8:25 AM: