NORFOLK, Va. (AP) - Efforts by a Virginia city to resume jury trials during the COVID-19 pandemic have stalled because most of the people being called to serve aren’t showing up.
Roughly 9 out of 10 possible jurors aren’t showing up for court in Norfolk, a jump from the usual no-show rate of about 1 in 3, The Virginian-Pilot reported Thursday.
On paper, Norfolk began holding jury trials last week, almost exactly six months after the pandemic forced local judges to shut them down. The Norfolk Circuit Court is one of four in Virginia that has won approval from the state Supreme Court to restart jury trials. The high court had banned all lower courts from conducting them starting in mid-May.
While four trials were scheduled for last week in Norfolk, none of them actually happened. Defendants in three of the cases set for trial pleaded guilty. In the fourth, the victim who would have testified against the defendant didn’t show. Still, court officials had summoned 120 people for possible jury duty in that case, but only 14 showed up.
In another instance, a murder trial was supposed to start Monday, but only 25 of the 240 people summoned for jury duty came. The trial was delayed until Tuesday to call in 90 more potential jurors. Only five showed, but it was enough.
Between 2013 and 2016, the rate of people who didn’t show up for jury duty climbed steadily: 53% in 2013, 60% in 2014, 61% in 2015 and 66% in 2016. The high no-show rate was the cause of at least seven criminal and civil trials delayed in Norfolk in 2017 because too few jurors came to court.
Norfolk Clerk of Circuit Court George Schaefer said that in the past few years, he and other court officials worked together to essentially flip that number, raising the rate of jurors who showed up when summoned to between 60% and 70%. He credits having Norfolk sheriff’s deputies hand deliver jury summonses to people’s doors, instead of mailing them, and judges hauling to court and fining no-shows.
“We saw a real climb,” Schaefer said.
But the pandemic is scaring off people, especially the elderly who are “the backbone” of those who normally report, Schaefer said. On top of that, court officials have been relegated to once again mailing jury summons, although Schaefer said the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office has agreed to hand-deliver them starting this month. Norfolk’s Circuit Court judges have yet to restart their no-show docket, which Schaefer said is key in holding people accountable.
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