County Reverts to Old Policy Requiring 10-Day Jury Service

It was an effort to increase the number of people available for jury duty in Los Angeles County. It didn’t work.

So, starting Oct. 4, those called for jury duty will once again be required to make themselves available for 10 days of service. That was the way it was before last fall, when the number of days was cut to five, or however long it took to sit on one case.

“There was a lot of confusion� about the five days or one-trial plan, said Juanita Blankenship, who oversees juror services in Los Angeles County’s Municipal and Superior Courts. “It was beginning to cause us some problems.�

She said jurors and their employers focused on the five-day aspect of the plan and tuned out the one-trial part.

When judges queried them about how long they were available to hear a case, they often said they had blocked out only five days and had to be excused from longer duty, according to Blankenship.

That in turn threatened to wipe out the benefits of another plan, also begun last year, that called for the pools from which jurors are chosen to be smaller. The smaller pools led to nearly $1 million in savings last year on juror fees and transportation, Blankenship said.

“It was really a time-waster for the court,� she said of the five-day plan. “Your only options are to send larger panels or summon more panels, which results in a lot of downtime.�

In making the change last year to the five-day, one-trial plan, court officials had hoped that more companies would be inclined to let their employees take time off with pay and serve on juries. The officials also had hoped the plan would increase the economic and racial diversity of jury pools. But neither happened.