When it comes to the speed at which jurors are picked for civil trials, Connecticut finishes dead last in the nation, taking four times longer than the state with the next worst record -- California. But that's the not worst part. Sometimes, the 16 hours it takes on average in Connecticut to interview potential jurors, review their written answers to questionnaires and gauge whether they can keep an open mind in their deliberations takes longer than the trial.

These are the among the findings of the National Center for State Courts, which notes that South Carolina is the quickest at choosing jurors for civil cases, completing the task in about a half-hour flat on average.

Finding the right jurors for a particular case takes longer in Connecticut because we question would-be jurors one at a time versus en masse and because, most of the time, lawyers and not judges run the show.

Jury service is an obligation on par with the right to vote. It's part of what it means to participate in a democracy and ensure that justice is done. Yet the first reaction so many of us have to a juror summons in our mail is to groan and view it as an inconvenience in our already jam-packed, over-scheduled, under-compensated lives.

The Judicial Branch's Public Service and Trust Commission, overseen by Judge Linda Lager in New Haven, wants to streamline the jury-selection process, entice more citizens to serve and save taxpayers some money along the way. It has a series of recommendations, contained in a 130-page study of the state's courts, some of which will require legislative action, others that now are being phased-in to courtrooms across the state.

Among some of the changes the commission backs is an agreement to have judges pre-screen jurors as a group and eliminate those who are clearly wrong for a case. This idea is controversial to some lawyers because they now control all of civil voir dire. That can be an opportunity for gamesmanship, trying to shape the juror's outlook before the trial starts, and it's partly why voir dire can take so long. It makes sense to require oversight by neutral parties, judges, to have as much control as they do in criminal cases.

Absent a conflict of interest, the only way out of jury service is an undue burden or excessive hardship. Some of the more novel excuses to get out of jury duty that I've witnessed are: incontinence, bowel disorder, inability to make decisions, understand English and flat-out stupidity.

But this is the payback for trying to cast too big a net for jurors.

In 2008, jury administrators in Connecticut mailed out 610,120 summonses for jury service and scheduled 316, 978 of them to serve. But the courts canceled 56 percent of them ahead of time, and ended up using a mere 31 percent.

To seat more jurors in the pool, the commission wants jury administrators to do something that might look counter-intuitive: issue fewer juror summonses and figure out the minimum number it truly requires. For instance, if the 177,461 jurors the courts canceled were never summoned in the first place, Connecticut taxpayers would have saved $307,000 on postage alone.

Add to that the problem of no-show jurors, people who simply ignore a summons. A law on the books makes it a $136 infraction to fail to arrive.

There were 70,601 missing-in-action jurors, according to the Judicial Branch statistics in the last two year. But none of them paid for their violations because the Chief State's Attorney's Office considers it an unenforceable law. Had the state prosecuted these no-show jurors, it would have collected $9.6 million.

A movement is afoot to pass legislation that would convert this offense into an administrative enforcement action so it would be easier to collect those fines. Imagine if Connecticut had that extra money now?
