Courthouse Docents Will Help Jurors

Everybody knows someone with a jury duty horror story--whether it be tales about waiting eight hours for your name to be called or finding out you’ve been waiting in the wrong room.

Now, the Los Angeles County Juror Services Program hopes to improve the experience through the Jury Docent Program--the first of its kind in the nation.

The program, which begins Monday, enlists eight docents to the Van Nuys Courthouse and the Criminal Courts Building downtown. The docent’s job is to lend a hand to jurors. The docents will be available from 8 a.m. to noon to answer jurors’ questions. If they don’t know an answer, they will find someone who does.

“For a lot of people, jury duty is a strange and even stressful experience,” said Jerriane Hayslett, public information officer for the county courts. “The goal of this program is to ease that stress and make people feel more comfortable.”

Docents, clad in burgundy blazers, will answer queries about everything from what rules and restrictions jurors face to where the nearest pay phone is.

The program comes at almost no cost because the docents are volunteers. Supermarket clerks, retired business managers and retired court employees have all qualified as volunteers after undergoing an intensive three-day training program. The blazers were donated by Earl Bradley, administrator at the Newhall Municipal Court.

The program is the brainchild of Gloria Gomez of the Juror Services Division, and will be implemented by the Court Improvement Initiative’s Van Nuys Task Force, a county agency whose goal is to improve the courts.

While the docents will be working out of Van Nuys and downtown on Monday, officials already have plans to place volunteers in Santa Monica early next year, said Hayslett.