VIERA, Fla - 1,500 residents don't receive summons

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July 11, 2000 Criminal court left without jurors 1,500 residents don't receive summons By Holly Roberson FLORIDA TODAY VIERA, Fla. -- More than 200 criminal court cases in Brevard County are in limbo this week because about 1,500 people who were expected to show up for jury duty Monday never received a summons.

The problem was caused by a communication breakdown between the Clerk of Courts and NCP Solutions of Jacksonville, which has been under contract to handle jury notification for the county for five years.

This is the first time such a problem has occurred, deputy clerk Jim Giles said.

Normally, the clerk's office electronically sends the list of potential jurors and their addresses to NCP, which opens the file and faxes a confirmation memo to the clerk's office.

This time, the clerk sent a file to NCP on May 12 but never received a confirmation. That's because the file was corrupted and either couldn't be opened or read as empty. Nobody from the company called the clerk's office about the problem; the clerk's office didn't call to find out why it never received a confirmation.

"It comes at the worst possible time for the clerk's office in the court of public opinion," said Curt Unruh, the clerk of court's information systems director.

The office's woes began in November with a late start on a Y2K-compliant computer system. After the system was runnning, glitches shut it down or made it work slowly, creating a massive backlog of court records.

After several months and thousands of dollars in overtime, the clerk's office finally cuaght up on the files.

Monday's breakdown upset the schedules of judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and their clients, who all showed up for trials Monday morning.

>Giles said steps are being taken to ensure notification next time there is a problem with jury notices.

Because the six judges in Viera, Melbourne and Titusville scheduled to hold trials this week have other work they can do, the cost of the trial delays is hard to quantify, Giles said.

>Those judges will have to decide when to reschedule the cases. The soonest most of them could be heard is next week.

http://www.floridatoday.com/news/local/stories/2000/jul/loc071100f.htm

-- Doris (reaper1@mindspring.com), July 11, 2000


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