In an average month, more than 2,000 residents of Lackawanna County receive a summons to report to the courthouse to potentially serve as a juror in a criminal or civil trial in Common Pleas Court.
Keeping track of who received the summons, who responded and who reported to the courthouse is a challenge, all the more so because the court administrator's office has just one employee - jury clerk Bonnie Kumor - assigned to jury services.
It is a process court administrator Ron Mackay is taking steps to streamline.
"We are trying to make it a little less labor-intensive," Mr. Mackay said. "That's the idea of the whole thing."
In October, the court administrator hired Infocon Corp., Ebensburg, to take over the printing and mailing of the summonses, which the office previously had preprinted in bulk.
Mr. Mackay said the biggest difference is each Infocon summons is individually printed and contains - in addition to the prospective juror's name, address, juror number and report date - a scannable bar code unique to that summons.
"When the juror shows up on their jury day, that is when we zap it with a bar-code reader into a laptop, and that checks them in," Mr. Mackay said.
In another change, each summons now includes two confidential questionnaires the recipient must fill out and return to the court administrator's office within five days.
The first, a juror eligibility questionnaire, asks for mostly general information. The second is the juror criminal information questionnaire, which becomes relevant only if there is a possibility the person will be selected to serve as a juror in a criminal case.
In the past, prospective jurors filled out the criminal questionnaire when they arrived at the courthouse.
"Now they don't have to sit there (in the jury assembly room) and manually fill it out that day," Mr. Mackay said.
One area in which Mr. Mackay's office is still encountering difficulty - and where the public still is trying to get the hang of the new system - is the return of the questionnaires.
The envelope in which the prospective juror receives the summons also doubles as the return envelope. Although the envelope is clearly marked, "Read instructions on reverse side before opening," not everyone is following the edict.
"They're coming back mutilated; they're coming back in regular envelopes," Ms. Kumor said. "Some people are taking the questionnaire and taping it or stapling it - any way to get it back to us."
She and Mr. Mackay urged people who receive a summons to read and carefully follow the instructions, fill out the form and return it in the postage-paid envelope provided as quickly as possible.
"And then show up," Mr. Mackay said, noting county judges have in the past held people in contempt for not appearing for jury duty.
Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com