TBD | Administrative Orders | Florida Supreme Court

A. Source Lists

The initial candidate selection list is created from:

1. The quarterly list of names provided by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) pursuant to section 40.011, Florida Statutes. DHSMV provides the Florida Court Clerks and Comptrollers (FCCC) with a data file that contains all persons holding a valid Florida Driver License or Identification Card. FCCC acts as a distribution agent, grouping the data by County and dispersing it to the Clerk of Court. This data file only includes Alachua County residents.

2. The existing juror candidates from the existing juror management system along with qualification data, which will be imported from Alachua County’s current jury selection system. The DHSMV data file will be processed against the existing, adding new names and updating existing information, such as addresses.

3. Manually entered candidates from the existing juror candidate data. JuryView allows individuals to be manually entered as required.

In addition:

4. The Clerk is the official custodian for the Master Candidate table (source list) and is responsible for the security and integrity of the list and all processes.

5. The Master Candidate Table (final juror candidate list) will not contain less than 250 names per section 40.02, Florida Statutes.

B. Source Data Adjustments

1. The clerk’s office receives the DHSMV source data from FCCC quarterly via a dedicated network connection and the file is placed into a secured folder on a server for processing. The data received is an ASCII, fixed-length file and is not modified in any way.

2. When names are imported, they are matched with existing data and the contact information is updated in JuryView, but the name retains JuryView’s exclusion codes.

3. FCCC also provides a data file from the Office of Vital Statistics to the clerk twice a month that contains a list of persons who are deceased. This is also an ASCII, fixed-length file and is also placed into a secure folder on a server for processing. It is not modified in any way. Once received, the data is imported and parsed and used to update the candidates table in JuryView. Each deceased person is flagged as permanently excused and no longer eligible for selection. These flagged names are kept and compared with each quarterly load.

4. The clerk’s jury manager receives a monthly report of persons who are determined incapacitated or incompetent from the Clerk’s probate department. These names are manually flagged as permanently excused and kept and compared with each data load.

5. FDLE provides felony convictions to the clerk monthly, and the names on the felony conviction list are manually flagged in JuryView as permanently excused and kept and compared with each data load.

6. The DHSMV file gives age information and persons can request removal from the candidate list if they are age 70 or older. These exclusions are entered manually, flagged as permanently excused, and kept and compared with each load.

7. For those people who have filed request-to-serve affidavits, their information is manually entered into the candidates table by the clerk’s office and the names are flagged so that they are not removed in later quarterly updates.

8. Candidate names are marked with exclusion codes based on the exclusion lists identified above per sections 40.013, 40.022 or 40.023, Florida Statutes. Candidate data also retains service information, such as whether a candidate is on an open panel. Candidate names are flagged as excluded if they are prohibited from serving, have already served, or their service is otherwise excused or postponed. JuryView also allows exemption entries, such as those over 70 or caretakers, and allows for postponements so that those candidates will be included in later venires. For example, if an individual is postponed until January 15, 2014, due to a scheduling conflict, that postponement date is stored in their record and the first venire created on or after that date will automatically include that individual in addition to those that were selected at random. Once the candidate is in a pool, they cannot be pulled into a new term automatically, but can be manually added to the retainer pool (excused jurors with future availability dates) and when the ‘retainer pool’ box is checked, these jurors are selected first for the next pool of candidates.

C. Time Frame

1. The DHSMV file is provided quarterly: January, April, July, and October. The master Candidate table is updated with this information when received.

2. The file containing the names of deceased persons is provided on the 1st and the 15th of each month. The Master Candidate table is updated with this information when it is received.

3. Reports on incompetent persons and convicted felons are received monthly.

4. Those filing affidavits asking to serve as jurors are entered manually by the clerk of court as the affidavits are received.

5. Candidates that are excused pursuant to section 40.013, Florida Statutes, or postponed to a later date are updated on demand.

D. Initial Jury Candidate List

1. JuryView’s initial database creation process loads DHSMV data from the work table into the permanent tables [Impjuror] in the application using the SQL Server script to transfer the single table structure to an SQL server 2008 R2 64-bit relational database. JuryView identifies duplicates at the point of loading the DHSMV file. Duplicates are extracted and placed in a separate table [Jurordup]. JuryView can be configured to sort out zip codes that are not Alachua County 326 zip codes to find errors in the data sent by FCCC, which is already sorted by county. Once this juror database is built the first time, all quarterly updates will be performed against it. This initial creation will be scheduled to coincide with the receipt of quarterly DHSMV data. Each name is assigned a unique id number as it is imported in or added to JuryView.

2. This application is being acquired to replace an existing application. Once the initial database is created, specified data will be imported from the current system. Imported data includes (a) records of candidates that are not qualified to serve, such as felons, the deceased, and the incapacitated; (b) those who have served within the last year, (c) those over 70 who have requested exclusion; (d) those who have been added by affidavit; and (e) those whose upcoming service is scheduled. No names will be modified during this import.

3. With quarterly updates, each new name found in the DHSMV data, is added to the database and assigned a unique id number. If the name exists in the database, the person’s information is updated with the DHSMV data. Jurors that exist in the database, but are not in the quarterly DHSMV list are blocked from service, unless they were manually added as part of the affidavit process. [When a juror is in the database but not in the incoming file, they get a temporary excusal of IMPEXJUR for the following quarter—the date range comes from the quarterly refresh date.] The quarterly data refresh does not override excusal or deferral flags.

4. Those filing affidavits asking to serve as jurors are entered manually by the Clerk of Court as the affidavits are received.

5. Exclusions:

a. The Department of Health file with names of the deceased is provided by FCCC. This file is reviewed and the listed names are manually flagged as excluded.

b. The other required exclusions are also manually flagged upon receipt of the incapacity and convicted felon reports.

c. Deferrals are also flagged with a date so that when a deferred juror is reviewed for selection, the name is excluded if the time on the deferral has not expired.

d. Jurors who have served are also flagged with a 12-month deferral and will be passed over for selection until the deferral date has expired.

A. Equipment and Software

JuryView is a graphical, client-server-based application written in Uniface. The current version is 2.51 and is owned by CourtView. It is a commercial application, which is also being used in Sarasota and Flagler Counties.

The application will be housed in a virtual server hosted within a Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster on Dell PowerEdge 710 servers. The database server is also hosted in a clustered Dell PowerEdge 710 servers running SQL Server 2008 R2 (64 bit). Both clusters are running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit).

Changes in the clerk’s operating system will not affect the software.

B. Security

The Clerk of Court is the official custodian and is responsible for the security and integrity of the name lists and of the juror pool selection process.

All servers are located in the Clerk’s Office located in the Alachua County Civil and Family Justice Center. The Clerk’s Office has a designated Data Center which is secured by a code-key lock. Only authorized personnel have access to the Clerk’s Data Center. The Data Center is designed for 24/7 operation and is supported by an uninterruptible power supply and generator systems.

JuryView is a client-server-based application and, as such, is not accessible to the public. The software application is secured via passwords, set to allow only the appropriate clerks access to the application. Court Administration will be supplied their own passwords to the application so they can continue to process excusals and postponements as is done under the current application.

All information necessary for auditing purposes, including random number seed sets is stored perpetually in tables as part of the application base.

C. Process Overview for Name Selection

The clerk’s office and a judge determine that a jury pool needs to be created and how many potential jurors the pool should contain. Information about this pool is entered into JuryView such as the date, number of jurors needed, etc. JuryView can select whatever number of jurors is needed as often as needed.

JuryView begins the selection process by assigning a random number to each juror record with a status code of ‘qual.’ Uniface then sorts the jurors by the randomly assigned numbers in sequential order. Then the program filters out any juror that is not eligible to serve, which is based on the juror’s status. Individuals are then selected based on their number until the predetermined or requested population is filled. This deferral process is repeated for every term and panel selection.

This is a more detailed overview:

1. The RNG is initialized with the seed set (see Section E Initialization).

2. A request is made to the RNG for a random number.

3. The random number is assigned to the first record in the candidate table with a status of ‘qualified.' Should the RNG return a number that has already been selected, the process returns to step 1.

4. If there are unassigned records with a status of ‘qualified,' the process returns to step 1, otherwise it ends.

5. A record set [Master Juror Table] is created with an SQL Select against the master Candidate table. The SQL Select contains the necessary select/omit logic so as to filter out any juror that has an excusal with begin and end dates that do NOT fall in the panel date range, including a person who has served within the past year to serve in this jury pool. [The definition of excused is a juror that has an EXEMPT_CD not null and EXEMPT_START_DT and EXEMPT_END_DT are populated in the JUROR table.] This deferral process is repeated for every term/panel selection.

6. JuryView then assigns individuals to jury pools from the Master Juror table created in section 5, with jurors selected in juror number order based on the random number that was assigned, the lowest number being selected first, until each pool has the needed number of jurors.

D. Name Selection Algorithm

Random Number Generator

The Random Number Generator (RNG) used in JuryView is the Mersenne Twister (MT)¹. The routine was re-written in C++ to produce the desired results within the JuryView application and a copy of the source code is included (Attachment A). The jryrndgn routine (attached) receives five parameters. One parameter is the term, service or panel ID. The other four parameters are the seed values generated by the MicroSoft SQL Server Rand function. Each seed value is generated by repeated invocation of the following TSQL statement:

SELECT @seed1=CONVERT(int, RAND() * 1000) * 1000000

+ CONVERT(int, RAND() * 1000) * 10000

+ CONVERT(int, RAND() * 1000) * 1

+ (DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) * 10000) * 100

See Appendix B, Code for the seedgen procedure along with notes from the original tpr that created this process.

Certification

The output of the version of the Mersenne Twister used in the CourtView application JuryView 2.51 was verified against the test output provided by the authors in the file: mt19937ar.out available on the authors web site: http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~m-mat/MT/emt.html

The generator was initialized with the values <0x123, 0x234, 0x345, 0x456> and 1000 numbers were generated from the function genrand_int32. The last fifteen values are provided for comparison.

3759461013	981457956	830587662	877191791	650996736
988064871	515461600	089077232	225147448	249609188
2643151863	896204135	416995901	397735321	460025646

E. Initialization

RNG

The RNG is written in C++ and all other processes are written in MS SQL Server SQL language and it is compiled as a stored procedure in the Master Jury database. This process is explained in the following example:

A list containing all potential juror names in Alachua County is loaded into JuryView from the acceptable source data (DHSMV). At the time the venires are ready to be built JuryView assigns a random number to each qualified individual until the requested number of jurors is filled. These jurors will be “skipped” at the next venire list creation because they have already been selected.

Parameters

The other four parameters are the seed values generated in the stored procedure seedgen which generates four seeds by using the MicroSoft SQL Server RAND function.² The formula builds each seed by using the RAND function to generate a number between 1 and 999 that is then multiplied by 1000000 then takes that number and adds it to a new RAND number between 1 and 999 which is multiplied by 1; this number is then added to a number generated from the millisecond of the current time multiplied to 10000 then multiplied by 100. This formula is used to generate each seed value.

The random key for each juror is generated by the Mersenne Twister using jryrngdn.exe and is populated using the RAND_NBR.RANDNBR field. The random key value is only updated for each juror that meets the cert level (term, service, and panel) requirements that the juror is qualified for. The following scripts: rand_term_juror, rand_service_juror, and rand_panel_juror are used to populate the random key field on each juror. Each script has detailed descriptions of how these values are generated. The quarterly draw generates the random key value on the JURY_POOL table with the same formula from the seedgen procedure that generates the seed values.

The four seed values (seed1, seed2, seed3, seed4) in the RANDSEED table are 32-bit values.

Please see addendum.

Random numbers (rand_nbr) are created for jurors that meet certain criteria (status_cd = 'QUAL'), which you can see in the RAND_TERM_JUROR procedure, because these are the only jurors that can be selected in the uniface code. The RANDJURY (Attachment C) and RAND_TERM_JUROR (Attachment D) procedures and the seedgen procedure (Attachment B) referenced above are the 3 SQL procedures used in the randomization.

Starting, Stopping and Other Factors

The process described for the Name Selection Algorithm has no start or stop features. Each name is assigned a random number. In the event of a failure in the system during this processing, the venire list can be recreated on demand. A record of the old and new seed values for the RNG are stored for auditing purposes.

If a failure happens during the creation of the venire all random number are assigned first before any juror is place on a venire so the randomization will have already been completed. But if the list is only partially completed there is no proper method to fill it manually and keep the true randomization so the best process for any venire that did not complete would be to delete the unfinished venire and re-run the process which will again regenerate random numbers and assign those to qualified jurors until the process properly completes for the full amount of requested jurors.

Alachua County

Jury Selection Plan

February, 2014

Table of Contents

Purpose and Scope