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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 3, 1979)
Page 4B THE BATTALION MONOAV. SEPTEMBER 3. 1979 Phone-in system saves juror s time and state’s money United Press Internatiofud WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — At 5:30 p.m., a Larchmont housewife E icks up the telephone, dials a number in White Plains, and then egins making plans for the next day. An IBM executive in Dutchess County is conducting business as usual, even though he may get a call from that same White Plains phone number any time later in the day. Both persons are participating in the “Juror Phone-In System” put into full use earlier this year in New York State s 9th Judicial District. Officials say the system has saved thousands of dollars for the state, as well as countless hours normally wasted by people assigned to jury duty. “It’s been a tremendous success and adds a new dimension and vitality to the administration of justice,” says Joseph Gagliardi, ad ministrative judge of the 9th judicial district, which is made up of five suburban and rural counties north of New York City. The system, which is beginning to be used in other areas of the country, is simple. All people assigned to jury duty report on the first day of their two-week term and are given a number between 1 and 999. That night they call a special telephone number and a voice rattles off a series of numbers of veniremen who will be required to report the following day. “The following jurors will report to the central grand jury room at 9 a.m.: 16, 22, 64, 112, 114, 120 .” The process is then repeated daily, with jurors chosen at random from a rotating barrel inside the office of the Commissioner of Jurors. A variation on the basic system is the One-Hour Notification Plan, under which prospective jurors must provide a phone number where they can be reached if more than the expected number of cases go to trial. “The reaction to the system has been overwhelming,” Gagliardi said. “We find we re not wasting the jurors’ time as we did before. Those who show up are be assigned for voir dire — pre-trial jury screening — and we re saving money because we don’t have to pay jurors their daily $8 fee or the 15 cents for mileage if they don’t report.” In July, 31 juries were picked in Westchester County at a cost of $40,361. One year earlier, only 16 juries were selected, but the cost to the state was $46,387. “As you can see from the July figures, in that month we got nearly twice as many juries picked and into trials for $6,000 less,” says Nicholas Federici, Gagliardi’s administrative assistant and one of those credited with spearheading the system. Before the district switched to the system, Federici says the pro cess of calling an adequate number of jurors was a “hit and miss” proposition. ‘The Commissioner of Jurors must send jury-duty notification let ters out 28 days in advance. It’s very hard to predict that far ahead how many jurors your’re going to need. Some cases get settled and others are postponed. “The result was you had a lot of people sitting around for hours or days doing nothing and really resenting jury duty. We had a 65 percent utilization rate before the phone-in system. “Now we re up over 90 percent and we re getting letters from jurors complimenting the system and thanking us for letting them be a part of the judicial system.” Westchester needs between 250-400 jurors on a given week, but they are not each needed on a given day. “For example, very few trials start on a Friday. Some do, so we may need some people, but most we can tell by the phone-in system not to bother to show up,” Federici says. About 20 percent of jurors in Westchester choose to go on one- hour alert. “These are mostly housewives or business executives who live or work somewhat near White Plains, ” Federici says. “It’s harder with people who work in the city (New York) or Connecticut. Barracks bite the dust Scavengers search through the rubble from the latest barracks demolition in the old mar ried student housing area. Many of the old barracks are being torn down. Some of the barracks date back to before WWII. Battalion photo by John Ballentine if sle Jupiter will help send spacecraft sun’s polar areas t PATRK I'nited Pi female v preside and fe nuch thi - goal btive, ai United Press International PASADENA, Calif. — The United States and European sp agencies will use the planet Jupiter as a slingshot to hurl instrument-laden spacecraft around the polar regions of the sunini mid 1980s. It will be the most comprehensive investigation ever made ofi sun, the source of life on Earth. The expedition, called Solar Polar, will be launched cooperal by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency and the Europe Space Agency (ESA), a consortium of 10 nations. Solar Polar will be directed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory] Pasadena, Calif. r The joint NASA-ESA program will send the two unmai spaceshots to Jupiter to use that giant planet’s tremendous gravit hurl the spacecraft back toward the polar regions of the sun —an of the star never before seen or investigated. Preceding Solar Polar, in October of this year, another Sun inv gation is to be launched into Earth orbit. The Solar Maximum sion. or “Solar Max,” will study solar flares from 1979 to 1981 seven separate experiments. The planets of the solar system revolve around the sun on apt from it’s equator, called the ecliptic plane. No spacecraft has yet gone more than a few degrees north on of that plane. Scientists hope to learn more about the changes in solar condil that cause the variations in the Earth’s climate, and to bra understanding of the physics of a star. The two spacecraft will be launched in tandem in outer spaa February, 1983, from a single Space Shuttle. They will take slij it puttinj necessar , emotio , they ins din view different flight paths to Jupiter and will arrive in the planet’s radial Sees of cor ils, govern example: sn^en the fer her bad male, snii slept he when a i the cor pve suite, climbed field a few days apart after journeys of 470 and 475 days. The spacecraft, each weighing between 730 and 990 pounds, be powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, power-packs that provide more than 225 watts each. The craft also will have telemetry systems that can transmit JPL up to 3,000 bits of information per second at a maximum ran| more than 550 million miles. The science payloads — 15 separate investigations — will about 35 watts of power per spacecraft. Cost of U.S. participation in the shot is estimated at $236.7mill not including costs of launch, tracking or acquisition of data. Euroi I participation is put at $120 million, not including cost of instrumen Il s what 1 Scientists agree much more knowledge is needed about the sun lal women heliosphere, sun spots and their affect on Earth and its atmospb I at annual Atmospheric heating caused by solar activity was the cause oflnd Hospil recent premature demise of Skylab. loolunase: Sunspots reach a maximum about every 10.7 years but many s jlpward Wi tists say the cycle is an unreliable one. By heard lot In addition to sunspots, solar gusts — gusts of intense radiArs—Dr. emanating from solar flares which shoot hundreds of thousaniler and pre miles into space — can affect Earth communications drastically lir Corpora The two spacecraft, which will be alike but not exactly twins,Inc. in head for Jupiter and double back toward the sun with one goingi # King, vie and the other south over the solar poles. MAirTrans] At the sun in 1986, one spacecraft will fly over the north pa;igo, an air about 186 million miles at its closest — or twice the distance from! iarter bus Earth. At the same time, the other will fly beneath the south p: g told of t Their trajectories will carry them around the sun at about 78, mph so that about nine months later the southern spacecraft' swing over the north pole and the northern spacecraft under south pole. That point, in September of 1987, marks the conclusion of primary mission, but if science instruments aboard the spacecraft five iVorn; still returning useful data, mission monitoring will continue. During their journey to and around Jupiter, the spacecraft also add to previous investigations of that planet’s magnetic field ani interrelationship with the sun’s influence. rd of op in e executive rmous but ous observ in a news addition t using se these diff lives: A business baixiujom: Snook, Texas Sept. 7th Back to School Dance Ray Wylie Hubbard 2 for 1 Draft from 7 to 8:30 Sept. 8th Sept. 1 3th Sept. 1 6th Sept. 22nd Sept. 28th Sept. 29th Good Vibration Rusty Weir Asleep at the Wheel B. W. Stevenson Texas Pride Flying Burrito Brothers Only 1 S minutes from Bryan-College Station 3 miles west of Snook on FM 60 (Intersection FM 60 & FM 3058) □ oarvi TUI A* AAtt Center offers rehabilitate counseling for ex-cultists By RICHARD M. HARNETT United Press International BERKELEY, Calif. — The Human Freedom Center, founded to cope with the Peoples Temple be fore the bloodshed in Guyana brought Jim Jones’ cult notoriety, now helps young people break away from other cults. "There is a parallel with what hap pened in the Peoples Temple,” Holly Morton, spokeswoman for the center, told UPI. “One of the first signs of a problem in the Peoples Temple was the breakdown in family communications. A lot of parents had just the same problems getting ktheir kids out.” The Human Freedom Center oc cupies a big yellow house near the University of California campus. It has four fulltime staff members, and the house is occupied at any given time by three or four young people attempting to adjust back into the mainstream of society after spending a few months or years with a cult. Director Dr. Lowell Streiker said the center is not in the business of trying to get people to give up their beliefs, but he said 80 percent of those who receive counselling there do not go back to the cult they came from. “We are operating the only half way house in the United States for rehabilitation of excultists,” Streiker said. “I never use the word depro gramming’ with my work. Its a very accurate word. We deal with so many people who have been pro grammed, who have been victims of mind control techniques which have robbed them of the ability to make their own decisions. “The problem of getting them to take responsibility for those deci sions themselves, thinking for them selves, certainly can be called de programming. Unfortunately de programming has a connotation of coercion, force, kidnapping, sen sationalized stuff, and because of the activities of a couple of people who call themselves deprogrammers, whose methods we don’t approve of.” The average cult defector spends about two weeks at the center, un dergoing group and individual coun selling. “We provide a positive, tive, family-like atmosphere,] Streiker. “We encourage start developing career go on the future they want for selves.” The program of the ceal geared to getting the ex-cult here to life in the mainstrea Streiker. Each person receii eral hours of group and ind counselling a day, “and evi takes part in the routine ofthelj meal preparation, houseke those sorts of chores.” But the center does not in rigid structure like that Streiker says is used by tl “We don’t post schedules everybody prays from 10 to 1 “Our fundamental rule is I are not the anti-cult cult," I “People are here for the pu becoming independent, eve Streiker receives a half < more calls each day. from simple requests for tion, to serious cries for persons caught in personal j Well, HORSEFEATHERS! If you bought a new textbook for CE 205 YOU BLEW IT! USED TEXTBOOKS ARE OUR BUSINESS. Come on in and check our supply. 846-4518 ‘Shop us first” Northgate 8:00-5:30 7 \