Historically, Cole County has been relatively "lenient" in terms of granting excuses for people not being able to serve jury duty.
That may be soon changing.
Now, Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem said they may have to be more aggressive in getting people to serve.
"Jury service is not a constitutional duty, but if you have been summoned, there is a court order which says you have to come to court," Beetem added. "The law requires that you address that. So if you have a summons for jury duty and you don't show up, you are likely to get a call from the court marshals reminding you about that service and the next time you'll have to come into court."
Beetem said historically he and other judges in Cole County have not had to resort to having a sheriff's deputy serve a summons on people who don't respond to a mailed summons.
Under state statute, the valid reasons someone can be excused from jury duty include: medical reasons, military conflict, being a student and other reasons deemed sufficient by the court.
"Now we've been pretty benevolent -- if someone has something going on in their life and they're getting treatment we take them off the roll for two years," Beetem said. "However, I recently got a note from a doctor on somebody who we knew was going around the community without any problems, but had a note from a doctor saying that by reason of physical and mental disability they are unable to serve on a jury.
"That's that doctor's privilege to sign that note. But when I see people that can go to the store and go to social events in town, but I get a note like that, that becomes frustrating," Beetem added.
Over the years, Beetem said they've accommodated people because of graduations and vacations.
"Civil trials take a little longer, a week or maybe two," Beetem said. "But many jury trials are for criminal cases and only last one or two days."
To get a jury pool together, he said, the state's court administrator program searches driver's license IDs and voter registrations.
"You don't have to have both, just one or the other," he said. "After the group is chosen, we send out jury questionnaires, asking for basic information such as their address and where they work, and most people respond back to an online address they are given."
Effective Feb. 18, the Missouri Juror Portal was activated. This online tool allows prospective jurors to respond to a jury questionnaire or summons that they get in the mail. Additionally, jurors may be able to request to be excused if allowed by a court.
Cole County Court records show 43 percent of jurors have been found to be actually qualified for jury service. Some of the reasons for that number not being higher is notices being returned due to bad addresses or the person is deceased.
"A problem is with the state allowing six-year driver's licenses; there's more of a chance that the information there can change, and if they're not voters, then nothing matches there," Beetem said. "So there are some problems with the databases we use to select jurors from."
Figures provided by the Cole County Court Administrator's Office show for the period of Nov. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2021, there were 400 summons sent out which was the same number for the period of Jan 3, 2022 to Feb. 25, 2022. In both periods, 40 notices were undeliverable. There were 96 and 94 jurors excused, respectively. The majority of those excused was because they were 75 years of age or older or they had health issues. For the period of Feb. 28, 2022, to April 29, 2022, 450 summons sent out with 39 undeliverable and 117 excused. Once again, being over 75 and health concerns topped the reasons for being excused.
During each time period, there were around 40 people who did not respond to the notice.
"Residents need to realize we won't sequester you on a monthlong jury trial without asking you if there is anything going on in your life that would keep you from doing this," Beetem said. "At the same time, we need to have more show up when they get the summons because the majority of the time we're looking at doing a one- or two-day jury trial."
In October 2020, Beetem had to declare a mistrial for a murder trial because not enough people showed up to put together a jury. At that time, Beetem said the reasons were because of bad weather, they were at the end of the time for the current jury panel to be on call and some people were scared of potential exposure to COVID-19 if they came.
After that incident and after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, things got better for a while, Beetem said. But during the past few months, they have seen an increase in people trying to excuse themselves from jury duty.
Beetem said they're asking residents to take jury duty more seriously.
"I have some concerns because we have some large trials coming up, and it's hard enough now to get a jury trial going," Beetem said. "There seems to be more people seeking excuses that are less than legitimate.
"We really try to accommodate people who give us advance obligations, but we still recognize that emergencies come up," Beetem added. "I am just afraid we're going to have to be less accommodating with excuses and follow up on them a little bit more."