The Twin Falls, Idaho, Times-News recently did a feature storyon the Twin Falls County jury commissioner. The article may give our readers some ideas about how to acquaint the community you serve about court staff and the virtues of jury service.
Jury Selection – Canada Style
It’s perhaps unfathomable to those of us in the American legal profession to imagine voir dire being conducted without supervision by a judge but instead by jurors. But that is precisely the case in Canada. There, if juror-led jury selection is compromised by over involvement by a judge, a criminal conviction must be overturned. Indeed, the recent reversal of the convictions of persons charged with a terrorist plot led to a Toronto Sun editorialadmonishing the procedure.
Jury Selection – US Military Style
In another stark contrast to jury selection in American courthouses, the New York Times reports that a military judge has scheduled a capital murder trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other defendants in a military court at Guantanamo Bay beginning in January 2021. According to a 10-page scheduling order by the trial judge, selection of 16 military officers (12 jurors plus 4 alternates) will begin six months before the trial date. Testimony is expected to last for months, perhaps extending to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
North Carolina’s Jury Selection Policies Studied and Challenged
The North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA) in 2009 that allowed death-row inmates to have their sentences reduced to life by presenting statistical evidence of a pattern of racial discrimination by prosecutors. Enactment of the RJA followed a Michigan State University College of Law study of 173 jury selections in North Carolina death-penalty trials. The research disclosed blacks were struck at twice the rate of whites. In 2011 the legislature gutted the RJA before completion of all sentencing reviews under the RJA. This situation set up a highly watched case now pending before the state supreme court. Oral arguments occurred this week. Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, equates the North Carolina jury-selection landscape to the one in Mississippi that was recently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Flowers v. Mississippi.
“What Justice Thomas Gets Right About Batson”
And with respect to the SCOTUS opinion in Flowers v. Mississippi, Professor Thomas Ward Frampton writes in the Stanford Law Reviewthat Justice Thomas’s controversial dissent in Flowers has some merit. Frampton suggests that the Thomas dissent prompts proponents of the Batson doctrine to think about how “race matters in the courtroom” and that Batson may inhibit more productive ways to think about race and the jury.
Has your court encountered belligerent jurors?
The NCSC Center for Jury Studies was contacted recently by a court administrator in the Midwest, who reported an increase in incidents with “belligerent jurors” who arrive at the courthouse spoiling for a fight with court staff in the jury assembly room and in the courtroom. The administrator also reported an increase in jurors wearing neo-Nazi and white supremacist clothing and accessories to court. The Center for Jury Studies staff wonders whether other courts have experienced similar trends with jurors or other court users. Please contact Paula Hannaford-Agor at phannaford@ncsc.org to share your experiences and how your court responded.