Jury management system

Jury management is not scheduling.

Source lists, randomization and fair cross-section requirements carry legal consequences when they go wrong. EmpanelJMS is a jury management system that runs the whole juror lifecycle — and measures the wheel while it does.

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EmpanelJMS Duren Fair Cross-Section Report comparing jury wheel demographic composition against census-eligible population, with per-group standard-deviation analysis.

Duren Fair Cross-Section Report — wheel composition measured against census-eligible population. Illustrative report.

8 stagesSource list to juror payment, one record

Duren · Castaneda · BatsonWheel analytics built into the system

Cloud or on-premNeither a reduced version of the other

1 court to statewideSame platform, no re-implementation

Why this is different

A jury wheel should be measured, not assumed.

Most jury administration systems treat the term as a calendaring problem: summon the jury pool, check them in, send them home. That works right up until someone asks the court to show that its selection process produced a fair cross-section of the community — and the honest answer is that nobody has looked since the wheel was built.

EmpanelJMS evaluates source lists, master wheels and juror utilization continuously, using recognized statistical methods, so a court can document that its jury selection process is being monitored with objective, repeatable analysis rather than assumption.

A jury system is constitutional infrastructure. Software that treats it as a calendaring problem will fail a court at the worst possible moment.

The master wheel

Everything downstream depends on the wheel being right.

Source lists arrive in whatever shape the supplying agency provides — voter registration extracts, driver's license and state ID files, tax rolls, utility lists. EmpanelJMS imports them with a mapping profile per source, normalizes names, standardizes addresses so duplicate detection actually works, and identifies duplicates across sources rather than only within them. A resident on both the voter roll and the DL file is one person in the wheel, not two.

The same names stop coming back

The complaint counties raise most often is not about technology. It is that the resident who died three years ago, the citizen a judge permanently excused, and the person who moved out of the county all get summoned again, year after year, because the last system had no memory.

A persistent suppression list: permanently excused, permanently disqualified or deceased is recorded once
Enforced automatically on every future wheel build — a rule applied before selection, not a note a new clerk has to know to check
Every wasted summons is postage, a clerk's time on the resulting call, and a citizen's trust eroded a little further

NCOA address hygiene

Addresses go stale. A summons sent to a former address is a juror who never had the chance to respond — and in aggregate, a wheel that quietly under-represents the parts of the population that move most often.

The wheel is run through NCOA (National Change of Address) processing on a regular cycle
Addresses of record updated against the USPS move database before summonses go out
Higher deliverable rate, less wasted certified-mail cost, and a wheel whose addresses reflect where people actually live

Residency to a tenth of a mile

Coarse ZIP-code residency checks miss exactly the edge cases that matter. EmpanelJMS geocodes each address and evaluates it against the jurisdiction boundary, so a citizen living just outside the county line is not summoned to serve where they are not eligible.

Prior service within the statutory window, age limits and locally maintained exclusion lists applied before selection
Each exclusion recorded with its reason, so a name that did not make the wheel can be explained

Draws you can reconstruct years later.

When a draw is executed, the system captures a snapshot of the eligible pool as it existed at that moment and stores it alongside the draw. When a motion asks months or years later how a particular panel came to be constituted, the court can produce the exact population the names were drawn from, the parameters used, and the resulting order.

Snapshot — eligible pool frozen at draw time
Ordered — deterministic sequence, stored rather than recomputed
Attributed — who drew it, when, with what parameters
Draws for a term, a week, a trial date, or a supplemental panel when the pool runs short — each a distinct record with its own audit trail

Many systems will tell you who was selected. Fewer can tell you what they were selected from.

The difference only becomes visible when someone challenges the array — precisely the moment a court cannot afford to be reconstructing history from backups.

Constitutional compliance

Analysis grounded in decades of jurisprudence.

Jury wheel analytics drawn from constitutional case law on jury representativeness and jury selection, reported in a form a court can keep.

Duren Fair Cross-Section

The Sixth Amendment requires jury pools be drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. Demographic representation in the wheel is evaluated against census-based eligible-population estimates, using methodologies commonly associated with Duren v. Missouri (1979) and Taylor v. Louisiana (1975).

Castaneda standard deviation

Random variation is expected; systematic exclusion is not. Statistical-significance testing using the standard-deviation methodology discussed in Castaneda v. Partida (1977), flagging disparities that may warrant additional review.

Batson Challenge Analyzer

Reporting to assist courts in evaluating patterns associated with peremptory challenges, based on methodologies discussed in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), Miller-El v. Dretke (2005) and Foster v. Chatman (2016). Where appropriate, Fisher's Exact Test evaluates whether observed strike patterns differ significantly from chance.

Representation changes over time.

Population shifts. Address quality degrades. Source lists change. Most systems evaluate the wheel only when a challenge is raised — EmpanelJMS monitors it throughout the life of the wheel, so trends surface before they become larger issues.

Source list composition — overlap and coverage across voter, driver's license and state ID lists
Qualified juror demographics against the eligible population over time
Response, excusal, qualification and failure-to-appear rates by group
Wheel depletion, and when replenishment is warranted
Randomization validation throughout the process

EmpanelJMS Wheel Demographic Timeline showing juror status and demographic cross-tabulation at a selected snapshot date.

Wheel Demographic Timeline. Illustrative report.

Where under-representation actually lives.

Absolute-disparity and comparative-disparity calculations presented side by side, so a court can evaluate representation using more than one recognized measure rather than relying on a single metric — and see it geographically.

ZIP-code and census-tract representation across the jurisdiction
Distance-to-courthouse analysis by demographic group
Over- and under-represented areas surfaced on the map

EmpanelJMS Geographic Analysis report showing juror distribution by ZIP code with over- and under-represented areas highlighted.

Geographic Analysis. Illustrative report.

Every analysis documents the data sources used and the statistical method applied, and produces documentation a court can retain. These reports provide objective statistical information for court review. They are not intended to replace judicial discretion or legal analysis.

The whole term

One long sequence, not eight products.

A gap anywhere in the term becomes manual work at the counter. Every stage of jury administration runs in one system, on one juror record.

01
Source list and qualification
Import voter and driver's license files, merge duplicates across sources, apply NCOA address updates and the suppression list, then build a reproducible random draw.
02
Summoning
Generate and mail summonses on the court's own form, with per-jurisdiction wording and terms. Undeliverables return to a worklist.
03
Juror response
Online, by phone, or on paper — questionnaires, excusal requests and hardship claims land in the same queue however they arrive.
04
Excusals and deferrals
Review, approve, defer to a later term or reschedule, with the reason recorded against the juror record for reporting.
05
Reporting and check-in
Kiosk, mobile or counter check-in feeding one live assembly room list, so the office knows the headcount before the judge asks.
06
Panels and voir dire
Draw a venire to a courtroom, seat in random order, record strikes and peremptory challenges, return unused panel members to the jury pool.
07
Attendance and payment
Per-diem and mileage calculated on the jurisdiction's schedule, then paid the way the court already pays.
08
Reporting
Yield, no-show rates, excusal reasons and cost per trial — the numbers administrators and legislatures ask for.

The paper still comes back

Digital-first is not digital-only. A meaningful share of jurors respond on paper, and the ones who do are often the ones a court most needs to reach.

Scanned paper responses land in the same queue as online ones
IVR and phone response for jurors without email
One juror record regardless of channel

Juror payment, your way

Attendance drives pay. Per-diem and mileage calculate on each jurisdiction's schedule, then pay out however the court already pays.

Checks, or the court's existing disbursement process
Stored value cards for courts that want to move off checks
Attendance and pay reconcile to the same juror record

An auditable record

An auditable record beats a convenient one. Decisions are recorded with the reason attached, because the question always comes later.

Random draw retained with an audit trail
Excusal and deferral reasons on the juror record
Application activity logged

Reaching jurors

Most citizens meet the court exactly once.

Jury duty is the only contact many citizens ever have with the courts, and the juror-facing side of a jury system is public-facing government service — multilingual and ADA-accessible, or it excludes people the court is required to reach. Most of the calls a jury office fields are variations of one question: do I have to come in tomorrow? A system that answers it before it is asked takes more work off the counter than any other single feature — and makes jury service something a citizen can complete from the phone in their hand.

Email, SMS and voice notifications

A scheduled notification engine sends email and SMS on the jurisdiction's own calendar, to each juror on the channel they prefer. The audience for every send is resolved at send time from live juror status, not from a list built last week.

Summons acknowledgement, reporting reminders, nightly standby instructions
Deferral and excusal rulings, payment issued notices, emergency closures
An automated voice line reads the same status the portal shows, so the phone tree never drifts out of sync

Text messages jurors can answer

SMS is two-way. A juror can reply to acknowledge receipt, ask whether to report, or request a callback, and the reply is captured against the juror record rather than lost in a carrier inbox.

Recognized replies answered automatically from live status
Anything unresolved routed to staff as a task, not a dead end
Bounced email and failed numbers flagged on the record so staff can correct them

Chat for what is not on the form

Most juror questions are not qualification questions. They are where do I park, what do I wear, my employer needs a letter, am I still supposed to come in. EmpanelChat answers those from the juror's own live record and the jurisdiction's configured content.

A correct answer at nine at night without a staff member on the other end
During configured hours a juror can ask for a person and be connected, already identified, with the conversation visible
Anything it cannot answer with confidence becomes a staff task with the exchange attached, rather than a guess

Multilingual by configuration, not by rebuild.

The juror portal, the chat assistant and the automated voice line all operate in the languages the jurisdiction configures. Spanish alongside English is standard; additional languages are added as configuration rather than a development project.

Language preference is stored on the juror record and carries across every channel
A juror who selects Spanish in the portal hears Spanish on the voice line, reads Spanish in chat, and receives Spanish email and text
A jurisdiction can enable a language on one channel without waiting for the others
The court does not maintain three separate translations of the same instruction

A juror who cannot read the response form, cannot understand the standby instruction, and cannot ask a question in a language they speak is a juror effectively excluded from service — and a fair cross-section problem in the making.

Accessibility is a service obligation.

Jurors are summoned from the whole community, including jurors with disabilities. A juror-facing system that excludes them does not just inconvenience a citizen — it narrows the pool the court draws from.

Juror-facing screens built so people using screen readers, keyboard navigation and other assistive technology can complete their response independently
Clear structure, readable typography, sufficient color contrast, visible focus, text alternatives for meaningful non-text content, and reduced-motion preferences respected
Accommodation requests submitted through the portal as part of the response, not as a separate phone call
Four ways in — online, email, text and voice — so a juror who cannot use one channel is not shut out of service

Courts are ADA Title II entities. Under the DOJ's 2024 rule, web content and mobile apps must conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA by 26 April 2027 for entities serving 50,000 or more, and 26 April 2028 for smaller entities and special districts — dates extended by one year in April 2026. The obligation covers content a public entity provides through a third party, which includes a juror portal.

EmpanelJMS is built toward WCAG 2.1 Level AA and the Section 508 expectations of government customers. Accessibility is an ongoing effort rather than a finished state, and we will say plainly where a given area stands. Ask us for the current position before you rely on it in a procurement.

One step to get there: each summons carries a QR code that opens the portal directly to that juror's record. No URL to type, no juror number to hunt for, no account to create. Messages are deduplicated so a juror who qualifies through two schedules is contacted once, a content hash records exactly what each recipient was sent, and consent and opt-out state is tracked per channel and honored across every schedule.

Court size

Sized to the court you actually run.

Most juror management systems were built for metropolitan courts with IT departments and six-figure project budgets, then stripped down for everyone else. EmpanelJMS starts at one jurisdiction and adds courts by configuration, so a single-county installation carries none of the machinery a statewide one needs.

One court, no overhead

A single-jurisdiction installation runs as one jurisdiction. There is no multi-court machinery to configure or work around, and nothing in the day's work asks a clerk to think about tenancy.

Configured, not customized

Term lengths, exemption criteria, pay and mileage schedules, summons wording and reporting instructions are settings, not code changes. A configured court gets fixes on the same release as everyone else; a customized one does not.

Room to grow into

The same platform runs a circuit, a district or a statewide deployment. A court that starts alone can join one later through configuration and data import — not a new installation and a second contract.

Platform and security

What your IT department will ask.

Most breaches of court systems begin with a credential, not an exploit. Identity and access answers first, infrastructure after.

Single sign-on

Courts that run their own identity infrastructure should not maintain a second, parallel set of accounts for jury management.

Single sign-on via OpenID Connect (OIDC)
Court IT provisions, reviews and revokes through its own directory
Disabling a staff account there removes EmpanelJMS access — no orphaned local account

Multi-factor authentication

MFA is enforced where exposure is greatest, rather than treated as a uniform setting.

Enforced for administrative, privileged and remote access
A clerk on the courthouse network and an administrator connecting remotely are not equivalent risks
Application activity logged to support investigation

Jurisdiction-scoped access

Authentication decides who gets in. Scope decides what they reach once in, and that is enforced below the interface.

Role-based, scoped to assigned jurisdictions
Enforced from the authenticated session at the data layer
A user of one court cannot reach another court's juror data

Application	ASP.NET Core / Blazor, server-rendered. Runs in a modern browser — no client install, no plug-ins.
Database	Microsoft SQL Server.
Hosting	Cloud-hosted by IJS on dedicated U.S. infrastructure, or on-premises on county-owned servers. Courts can move between them later without changing platforms or losing history.
Tenancy	A single-jurisdiction installation runs as one jurisdiction. Where several share a deployment, data is scoped by jurisdiction and enforced at the data layer.
Integration	Documented HTTPS interfaces for case management systems, payment processing, IVR and notification providers.
Juror payment	Per-diem and mileage calculated from attendance. Courts can keep their existing check or disbursement process, or issue and fund stored value cards through an integrated provider.
Data protection	Encrypted in transit and at rest. Uploaded documents scanned for malware before processing.
Data migration	Master wheel, juror history and open terms imported from the existing system during implementation. On termination your data is returned in a documented, machine-readable format, destroyed, or both, at your direction.

Deployment and licensing

Where it runs is your decision.

Where the system runs and how the court pays for it are separate questions, and EmpanelJMS is offered both ways on each.

Cloud or on-premises

Hosted on dedicated U.S. infrastructure, or installed on servers the county owns, inside its own network. Same application, same database schema, same features — a court that starts on one can move to the other without changing platforms or losing history.

Subscription or perpetual

An annual fee covering license, updates and support, or an outright purchase with annual maintenance. Subscription agreements carry a non-appropriation clause, and source code escrow can be arranged on a perpetual license.

Your data comes back

On termination the court's data is returned in a documented, machine-readable format, destroyed, or both, at the court's direction. Nothing is destroyed until the court confirms it has what it needs.

Contract terms, implementation and support are handled by Integrated Jury Solutions. Company and procurement detail →

Talk to us

See it on your own numbers.

A walkthrough runs about forty minutes on your own term calendar and your own pay schedule, not a demo dataset. If you are writing an RFP, we will answer the technical sections directly rather than sending a brochure.

Email us (903) 294-5879

EmpanelJMS is built and supported by Integrated Jury Solutions, LLC.

Jury management is the only thing the company does. For company background, security documentation and procurement detail, see the IJS site.

integratedjurysolutions.com →