12 | Juror Non-Response and Failure-to-Appear: Report and Recommendations for Harris County
was received too late for them to make arrangements to serve, including after the reporting date had
already passed. Timely mail delivery also appears to be problematic with respect to documentation
(doctor’s affidavits, for example) that were mailed back to the court. As a result, some survey
respondents were misidentified as jurors who failed to respond or appear for jury service when, in
fact, the documentation to be exempt or excused from jury service was not received by the court in a
timely manner.
The Office of the Inspector General for USPS routinely reports on the quality of postal service
delivery in the United States.
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While service delivery improved overall in 2023, Texas Postal Division
2, which includes the Houston metropolitan area, is approximately 3 percentage points lower than
its target of 93% delivery for first class mailing within 2 days. This poses an ongoing challenge to
the District Clerk with respect to timely delivery of jury summonses. In the near term, it may require
the District Clerk to increase the timeframe for mailing jury summonses to allow sufficient time for
jurors to receive and respond to their summons, including the return and processing of required
documentation related to disqualification, exemption, or hardship.
Because inaccurate and stale addresses contribute both to the known undeliverable rate for jury
summons and to at least some portion of the nonresponse and FTA rates, the District Clerk should
also confirm whether the Secretary of State routinely employs practices intended to ensure the
accuracy of addresses, including refreshing the master list at least annually and employing an
NCOA
Link
vendor to update addresses for individuals who have filed a forwarding address with
USPS. If these practices are not routinely employed during the master jury list creation process, the
Harris County District Clerk should implement them locally before summoning jurors from the new
list. In addition, the District Clerk should explore the feasibility of maintaining a database of record
changes reported by jurors (e.g., name changes, address changes) as well as jury summonses
returned as undeliverable by the USPS. This information can then be used to ensure that correct
information is not replaced by incorrect information when the master jury list is refreshed.
Both Survey 1 and Survey 2 respondents indicated that personal hardships involving poor health,
employment, transportation, childcare, or a conflict with the reporting date were the most frequent
reasons for failure to respond or appear for service. Many of these hardships appeared legitimate
and the jurors would likely have been excused from service, but most seemed unaware about
how to request an excusal, deferral, or other assistance. Although information about seeking an
excusal from jury service is included with the jury summons and on the District Clerk’s website, the
information may not be communicated clearly enough for most jurors to understand.
For example, the FAQ webpage includes the question “Who can be excused from jury service?” The
answer, however, refers only to persons who have been convicted of a felony, are on probation, or
are under indictment; it offers no information about individuals seeking to be excused for hardship.
Information about medical exemptions appears much further down the list of FAQs, but it is not
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An interactive dashboard of USPS service performance by Postal District and Division is available at
https://www.uspsoig.gov/our-work/service-performance.