Jury duty summons tells voters to call sex hotline

At least 350 jury summons sent out in Jackson County instructed potential jurors to call a sex hotline instead of the courts to find out if they needed to show up for a jury selection Monday.

Circuit Clerk Randy Carney said he first learned of the mix-up after Circuit Judge Robert Krebs called him Sunday night to let him know the wrong numbers had been placed on the summons.

The Circuit Clerk’s office has a contract with a company to send out the summons and they draft the telephone numbers. Carney said he plans to get to the bottom of what happened.

If anyone called the sex hotline, which Carney said he did not, it gave callers the option of hitting 1 or 2 to specify they were a man or woman.

“Hopefully,” Carney said, “no one did that.”

Potential jurors started called the Circuit Clerk’s office Monday morning to complain and some potential jurors came in to report the problem.

Carney said he met with Circuit Judge Dale Harkey about the matter Monday morning then drafted an apology letter to go out to all who received the incorrect summons.

In the letter, Carney asks potential jurors to “please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Carney did not want to identify the company that prepared the summons but said the company had been doing the summons for years prior to him taking office in January.

At this point, Carney said, he doesn’t know if his office will be liable for costs associated with any potential jurors billed for using the sex hotline.

“I don’t know what this office will be responsible for if they chose that number,” he said.

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Jury duty summons tells voters to call sex hotline."