On Wednesday, November 13th, the Interbranch Commission distributed its newly published pamphlet on juror mental health resources to President Judges and District Court Administrators in each of Pennsylvania’s 60 judicial districts.
Since the Interbranch Commission’s inception, the Commission’s Jury Service Committee has worked to reduce barriers to serving on a jury. One such barrier is the mental health impact that serving on a jury poses for both jurors and jurors’ families. To equip jurors post-trial with resources that mitigate this impact, the Commission developed a “plug and play” pamphlet template that can be easily modified for use in districts across the Commonwealth. The pamphlet, which has been reviewed by mental health and legal practitioners, includes information on juror stress and vicarious trauma and designates space for districts to insert their own county seal(s) and references to locally available mental health resources.
The Interbranch Commission is hopeful that districts that do not currently provide a post-trial juror service pamphlet (or that are interested in updating their existing pamphlet form) will modify our pamphlet for local use.