Applications Sought for Grand Jury

Officials of the Ventura County jury services office are now soliciting applications from people who want to serve on the 1994-95 Ventura County grand jury.

Jury services Supervisor Sandy Hatmaker said her department is behind in the number of qualified applicants it usually has by this time of year.

“We need lots of applicants,” she said Thursday. “We have about 40 at this time. We’ve just now started advertising to accumulate the pool for this year. But we will need at least 150 to 200 applicants to draw from.”

Hatmaker said people interested in serving on next year’s grand jury should be willing to spend about 40 hours a week working on the panel, which is charged with investigating government services as well as indicting suspects in felony cases.

Jurors receive a daily $20 stipend, plus 15 cents a mile for travel costs. Most of their work is performed at the County Government Center in Ventura.

Applications for service on the grand jury must be received by the jury services office before the end of March, Hatmaker said. For more information, call 654-5025.

After background checks by investigators from the district attorney’s office, a panel of judges will whittle down the applicants to a pool of 30. The new grand jury will be impaneled on July 1.