Jury Clerk communicates electronically with jurors to improve juror yield

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2016

"Please report to the 5th floor jury room." "Please report to Judge Foster, 4th floor." "You are released for lunch. Please enjoy Mount Clemens." These are examples of SMS text messages Macomb County jurors receive. This program started as a partnership with the downtown business community to provide restaurant-style pagers to jurors, and has evolved into integrated text messaging. The Macomb County Jury Room vendor, Courthouse Technologies, Ltd., provides integrated text-messaging service to jurors as part of the current Jury Management Software (JMS). The jury room uses this service to remind jurors of service and to communicate with jurors during their service. By using this service to remind jurors of their upcoming service day, the Jury Room has recognized a 20 percent higher yield rate of jurors. This means that more jurors appear for service than prior to reminding them via text message. Since more jurors are appearing, the Jury Room can summon less jurors, which is a time and cost savings. Using this service to communicate with jurors while they are serving has also been an added convenience and time-saver. The jurors feel more in touch and informed and the staff can communicate with several jurors at once with just a few buttons.