The Yolo County Superior Court announced yesterday a new program that will encourage citizen participation on juries, increasing the pool of potential jurors jurors by contacting those residents who have failed to respond to their jury summons and encouraging them to fulfill their obligations as citizens.
We have been observing juries now since January, and one of the huge features of the Yolo County Court system is that largely non-white defendants’ cases are heard by white juries. Perhaps one of the problems is that a large percentage of citizens fail to appear for jury service.
“The court’s goal is to ensure that jury service is shared by all eligible citizens of the county, as mandated by the state Legislature,” said Presiding Judge Dave Rosenberg in a press release Thursday. “Trial by jury is a cherished constitutional right and jury service is an obligation of citizenship. It is only fair that the obligation be shared by all citizens, not just those who faithfully answer the call to serve.”
California has made jury service much easier in recent years with the one-day or one-trial program. This initiative allows potential jurors that either personally report for jury duty or who serve as a juror not to be called again for a period of up to one year.
Yet according to Jim Perry, the court’s Executive Officer, in Yolo County an estimated 20 percent of citizens do not respond to their jury summons, making it difficult for the courts to provide enough jurors for all trials, and shifting the burden onto those citizens who do report for jury service.
“The more citizens who report for jury service, the fewer people will have to serve, the faster trials can proceed, the less frequently citizens will be called, and the better our system of justice will run,” Presiding Judge Rosenberg said.
Experience has shown that many citizens simply do not understand how important their service is to the smooth functioning of the judicial system, and many who initially fail to appear ultimately make perfectly good jurors. Sometimes, certain citizens are not eligible to serve or have legal hardships and are routinely excused once they provide an explanation to the court.
Under the court’s program, citizens who fail to appear for jury service will be sent a delinquency notice 14 days after the date stated on the summons. The notice will direct the juror to contact Jury Service by a specified date. If the juror still fails to appear, the court will follow a series of steps that ultimately leads to an Order to Show Cause (“OSC”) hearing, at which a monetary sanction of up to $1,500 may be imposed. Judge Rosenberg will preside over the monthly OSC hearings.
“The court’s aim is to have citizens serve as jurors, not to punish them,” said Presiding Judge Rosenberg.
While this is likely a good start, it would be interesting to study who is being served and who is not? Who are the people most likely to fail to appear?
The jury is one of the most important parts of the criminal justice system and yet it is a portion over which there is the least control. Most of the juries we have observed are heavily white, despite the fact that the defendants in this county are largely Hispanic, with a few blacks.
There are very few Hispanics and blacks that we have observed serving on juries.
Are these populations simply not being reached? Or are they failing to appear? If 20 percent of citizens fail to respond, are they disproportionately poor and minority?
These are all questions that would be good to answer. We certainly support finding more ways to get citizen participation. However, for a lot of people the fine would be crippling. I understand that Judge Rosenberg’s aim is to get people to serve, not be punished, nevertheless, there is a danger that the people most likely to be fined would be those least able to pay.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David… I may be mistaken, but in Yolo County, citizens = jury pool = registered voters.
Questions you may want to pursue:
Are jury service notices only sent to registered voters? If not, how do they get the names/addresses?
If notices are only sent to registered voters, there may be reasons for the lousy response… one is that we have a fairly transient population due to students, interim faculty, etc. Yolo County policy is to err on the side of not ‘purging’ voter rolls, but it is rare for a voter to “cancel” their registration as they move on, die, etc. Is this fact reflected in the data you have been given, or your analysis?
You cite the non-representation of ‘minorities’ in the jury pool. Are you saying this is deliberate, or could it be a function, intentional or not, of how the “pool” is determined? Is it that the minorities don’t respond, or is it that they are not called?
Do minorities work for employers who do not either excuse their workers from work (paid or unpaid)[this shouldn’t be the case, but…]? Side note: public employers are ‘required’ to excuse their employees from work, as paid time, and the “jury pay”, except for mileage, is surrendered to the agency.
Questions for you… you seem to imply that a “jury of their peers”, which is the standard, must assume that race/ethnicity is a major factor in who is a “peer”. Can a ‘white’ jury’ properly make a decision on the guilt/non-guilt of a ‘minority? Can a ‘minority’-heavy jury properly make a decision regarding a ‘white’ defendant?
I have been told, by jury services, that they use voter registration and DMV records as their sources.
“Questions for you… you seem to imply that a “jury of their peers”, which is the standard, must assume that race/ethnicity is a major factor in who is a “peer”. Can a ‘white’ jury’ properly make a decision on the guilt/non-guilt of a ‘minority? Can a ‘minority’-heavy jury properly make a decision regarding a ‘white’ defendant? “
In theory, I think every person regardless of race or status would be considered a peer.
In practice, we have a long history of excluding people of color from juries either through law or de facto.
Is it problematic that an overwhelming number of individuals of color receive judgment from generally white juries, I think so. I think balance and diversity are strengths for juries.
dmg: “Are these populations simply not being reached? Or are they failing to appear? If 20 percent of citizens fail to respond, are they disproportionately poor and minority?”
Are you implying that it is possible minorities are more likely to duck jury service?
Whenever resources are not valued properly they are misused – people should be paid for jury duty (at some amount like the average wage of everyone working in the county). People avoid jury duty because they know they will be mistreated by the Court – generally viewing Jury Duty as a huge unproductive waste of time. I will give you an example – the last time I went for jury duty I waited all day in a large room with other potential jurors and a group of us were called around 3:45. We (50 potential jurors) went to the courtroom and the judge introduced himself along with other people in the room then he immediatly adjurned until the next morning – we left at about 4:20PM. The next morning (at 9:00am) the jury selection process took about two hours. There was no reason the selection process could not have happened the night before – instead the large jury pool was forced to waste another half a day to convenience the Judge. If jurors were paid The Court would have to consider the Jury Cost/Value and The Court would be forced to utilize juries more efficiently.
Of course Jury compensation would would raise the cost of a Jury trial, but that does not necessarily mean the cost of the System would increase. The System would be forced to mitigate the cost of juries by-
Better screening of cases and more plea negotiation – avoiding jury trials.
The actual jury trials would be run more efficiently- shorter and more focused trials
Trials would start earlier in the day and and end later.
The jury selection process would be more compressed and no longer would potiential jurors be treated like cattle.
As a result of more jury trial efficiency, the Court might save money by reducing the number of Judges and related staff.
Of course the Jurists would feel better about the process – they would get compensation and would be treated as if they had more value. The entire perspective about Jury Duty would change – more people would look forward to working on a jury.
[quote]Are you implying that it is possible minorities are more likely to duck jury service? [/quote]
Not necessarily. I made an empirical observation, few minorities on juries. I can make another empirical observation, I get to see a lot of the prospective jurors and again I would say not a lot of minorities, so I see little reason to suspect they are simply being dismissed by the attorneys.
From that I inferred one possibility is that they are skipping, the other is that they are simply not in the jury pool. Either way it’s a problem. I don’t have enough data to determine which it is.
David… your responses to my comments (yours @ 6:30 am the 24th), are fair enough. Yolo County is primarily white, then Hispanic, overall in the County (Davis is an anomaly, in my opinion) there are few [percentage-wise] Asians/Blacks… of the ‘diverse’ group of students @ UCD, many are not registered in Yolo County, and their DMV records probably still indicate they are not showing up in the ‘jury pool’.
I suspect many hispanics, in this County, do not have employers who compensate employees for the difference between their hourly wage and the jury duty pay (which makes poll-workers look rich). Whatever ethnicity, lower-paid employees generally would take a huge hit if they served on a jury. My experience has been (being in the jury pool several times), that the original pool is fairly diverse, but by the time hardship & other issues are vetted, and the pre-emptory and for-cause exclusions are made by the attorneys, judges, yes…. there may be little ‘diversity’ left. Not sure where you can lay the blame for that, except for some of the points it appears that Alphonso was making.
Could a lot of the “white juries” be a result of language barriers with the minority population? If a person does not fully understand English, they will not be able to serve on an English trial…..