Changes are coming soon to the way Denton County summons residents for jury duty.
Denton County District Clerk David Trantham said Tuesday that this year, the Texas Legislature “made changes to the jury summoning process and codified some new methods of contact for prospective jurors.”
Currently, the county mails an 8.5×14″ summons in an envelope in a questionnaire format for the juror to respond via mail or online. Trantham said that nowadays, nearly all responses are submitted online, so the state is now allowing counties to mail jury summons on a post card, with instructions about how to submit their response online.
The Denton County District Clerk’s office has developed an 8.5×5.5″ post card for summoning jurors, which will provide a reporting location, date and time, as well as the website to submit a response. The change will begin in January 2024, for February reporting dates.
Additionally, the District Clerk’s office will be able to cancel potential jurors in real time as cases are removed from the jury trial dockets, provided the juror provided their contact information.
The District Clerk’s office also plans to have jurors report directly to their own precincts’ Justice of the Peace court, rather than having all potential jurors reported to the Courts Building in Denton, where some will be assigned to any of six JP courts around the county. For example, Trantham said, a Flower Mound resident may be asked to report to Precinct 4’s JP court, located in Canyon Falls, instead of making the trip up to Denton and then later possibly having to go to a different JP court in another part of the county.
