Jury Selection in Virginia Faulted for Violating Trial Judge’s Order
In a story that reads like a law-school final exam, a defendant in Newport News appeals her conviction on the grounds that three deliberating jurors were improperly selected in violation of the judge’s pretrial order. At the time of trial, defendant Shaun Brown was an independent candidate for U.S. Representative in the Second Federal District. U.S. District Court Judge Henry Coke Morgan, Jr. issued a pretrial order, stating, “the Jury Administrator [is] not to summons jurors residing in the Second Congressional District to serve as jurors in this matter. . . . The Court will also ensure that its (jury selection) addresses whether any jurors reside in the Second Congressional District.” After the trial, Brown discovered that three jurors lived in that district. In her pending appeal, the defendant seeks a new trial because these jurors may have had a political bias against her. Stay tuned for an answer to this tricky proposition.
El Chapo Attorneys Investigating Potential Juror Misconduct Involving Internet Research
Despite the trial judge’s admonitions to jurors to not do outside research during the three-month trial of drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman in Manhattan, news outlets are reporting that perhaps as many as five jurors violated that order.
Jurors Assert That Washington State’s Low Jury Service Pay Excludes Citizens from Serving
Two former jurors (one served on an 11-day trial, the other excused during jury selection due to financial hardship), representing a class of citizens, sued King County seeking a judgment declaring that the $10-per-day stipend was causing citizens to be disparately excluded from jury service based upon economic status and violated minimum wage and hour laws. The Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of the suit. The 2-1 majority opinion concluded, among several reasons, that Washington’s anti-discrimination statute does support a disparate impact claim based upon one’s economic status and that jurors are not employees. Judge J.P.T. Bjorgen, in a lengthy dissent, emphasized that the lower a citizen’s income, the greater is the incentive to self-exclude from jury service to avoid economic hardship. In contrast to the majority, he interpreted the anti-discrimination statute to mean “no one shall be denied that invisible robe due to economic status. The low rates of juror remuneration afforded by King County do just that. They make jury service economically impossible as a practical matter for many low income citizens, thus placing many already near the margins of society even further from the sense of belonging to it. Just as damaging, this failure also robs juries of the perspective of the struggling and the outcast, allowing the interests of the privileged even more purchase in a system we claim is one of equal justice under the law.”
Oahu Concert Hall Will Host Prospective Jurors in Federal Prosecution of Police Chief
Get ready Phantom of the Opera and Hawaiian Symphony Orchestra, 400 prospective jurors are coming to the Neal Blaisdell Center in Honolulu for the performance of Voir Dire in the corruption trial of former police chief Louis Kealoha, his wife, and several police officers in March.
Louisiana Supreme Court Likely to Consider Validity of Non-Unanimous Verdict Law
Last November, voters nullified Louisiana’s non-unanimous verdict law in serious felony cases. The ballot initiative applied to all trials commencing after January 1, 2019. In a recent case, a trial judge ruled the old law is unconstitutional and should apply immediately. The state attorney general intends to appeal that ruling, setting up an interesting case for the state high court.
“Jury Selection in the Weeds: Whither the Democratic Shore”
This is the title of Professor Jeffrey Abramson’s (University of Texas at Austin) recently published article. It is another one of his deep jury-trial studies. Here he analyzes the representativeness of juries in four federal cases. As a result, he argues that the Duren v. Missouri doctrine is inadequate for constructing representative juries. See 52 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 1 (2018).
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