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Clerk’s office reports returned summons and failure‑to‑appear issue; jury trial underway
Summary
The circuit clerk’s office told the committee it has sent large volumes of reminders and summonses, is seeing high rates of returned mail and bad addresses (raising postage costs), and has two jury trials and a murder trial in progress.
Tricia, a clerk reporting for the circuit clerk’s office, told the Law and Justice Committee on July 22 that the office has sent 1,040 summonses and 618 reminders so far in the month, handled two grand jury dates and two jury trials that required 80 jurors, and recorded 48 failures to appear.
Tricia said the clerk’s office began tracking returned summons and reminder mail in April and has seen many bad addresses. She estimated more than $500 in postage costs for returned mail for the tracking period and said returned mail likely accounts for a portion of the failure‑to‑appear total because some recipients may not have received their summons.
Tricia also reported that a murder trial started the previous day and moved into its second day. Committee members asked whether failure‑to‑appear notices are still delivered as letters; Tricia said the office continues to mail summonses and is exploring system and address‑validation fixes with the county’s computer programmer.
The committee approved routine administrative items later in the meeting.
