A Hybrid Application Manages Juries

Application Profile

Name	Jury Management System
Tasks	Organizing the jury qualification process and courtroom attendance
Users	Approx. 200 individual users in 41 court systems
Software Versions	Microsoft 365, SQL Server 2016 and later (Express or licensed)
Notable Features	Hybrid desktop-cloud solution, integrating Amazon RDS and on-prem SQL Server backend, document management system
Company	T. Smith Consulting Inc., Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
Author	Tracy Smith, founder and owner Adapted by George Hepworth for AFo

Our Jury Management System is currently used in 41 of the 75 counties in Arkansas. It has evolved over 20 years, starting with two counties that wanted something automated to replace the process of randomly drawing names that involved a Bingo wheel.

The state of Arkansas in southern USA (Wikimedia Commons)

Today, the qualification process, from being on a long list of potential jurors to acting as one of the twelve in a trial, involves many steps. The most important task of our system is to simplify this complexity for everyone involved. Access helps us do this by acting as a central frontend that integrates a variety of technologies under the hood. Here is a brief overview:

Juror Selection

The Arkansas Secretary of State provides a County Master List of jurors. With just a few clicks, clerks can

• Randomly select jurors from the state list

• Generate and track jury summons, either via mail or online submission

• Review and update juror information

• Prepare for courtroom jury trials

In more technical terms:

The state list in CSV format gets linked into Access and thus can easily be replaced periodically. The data to be further processed is saved in the local SQL Server backend. The summonses are mailed out to the jury panels. The questionnaire returned by each juror is scanned into the application and attached to the juror's profile. The integrated document management system uses NAPS2 for scanning and a custom DLL for PDF management.

Web Submission

We also provide a web interface for the exchange of data and documents with (potential) jurors. The development of the website was contracted out to a web development shop, allowing us to focus on our strengths: MS Access and SQL Server.

Behind the website is an Amazon AWS RDS SQL database connected in our SQL Server via a Linked Server Object. Stored procedures synchronize the data between the web database and the on-prem backend.

Jurors can securely submit their information online, saving county staff time and effort and allowing them to retrieve the information into the Access frontend, thus cutting down on paper, phone calls, and manual data entry. Most counties have had over 50% of their jurors submit online.

In the Courtroom

Once the county has established its official list by qualifying the accepted jurors and excusing the others, the Access application manages the courtroom logistics and juror attendance by providing

• Randomized seating in the jury box

• Printable seating charts for the judge and attorneys

• Strike lists of potential jurors for attorneys

• Real-time attendance tracking

• Automated juror payments with Excel output option for Accounts Payable

Managing the jury during a trial

Video Manual

A recent addition: The application has integrated training videos, i.e. links to screen-share sessions created with Microsoft Teams and saved in OneDrive. A video session can be created in one tenth the time a written manual would take and is much more effective.

Embedded links to training videos

Perspective

This application "competes" with a system the state offers at no charge to the counties. Nevertheless, seven new counties joined our system last year alone. This is partly due to the previously mentioned user-friendliness. Secondly, because we are flexible and future-proof:

With Microsoft 365 becoming standard in most courthouse environments, it tends to make for easy acceptance of Access as a platform. SQL Server still exists on most county servers, but the application can as well live on SQL Azure. Some counties have already moved their systems to the cloud with zero disruption.

Finally, a personal note:

It's always interesting and rewarding to see a high-profile trial in the media and think that we played a significant role in the process.

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