This episode talked mainly about jury selection and how it is done. Primarily it is about how people of color are often excluded from jury service, often by design because prosecutors think they tend to vote not guilty. But the part I did not know about was how this happens by accident, primarily because the job of selecting jury pools has been automated and privatized, and the programs used do make mistakes. In one case a computer program went down a list of jurors sorted by neighborhood alphabetically and stopped when it got 10000 jurors and then started back at the top, but 90% of all African Americans in that jurisdiction lived in an area that started with Y, so it never reached them. In another case a nine year old was summoned for jury duty. So if you have ever heard of someone who says that in 20 plus years of being an adult they have never been called for jury duty, some weird computer error may be the cause.
One thing John didn't mention is something that my husband and I have discussed recently. That is that in the age of Covid how do you balance jury safety with a defendant's right to a speedy trial? You just can't let everybody go until whenever this is over, and you just can't keep them in a holding cell forever either. Trials are proceeding in most places , even though the rate of community infection is higher now than it was when court houses were temporarily shuttered in March. How do you socially distance a jury? How does a jury deliberate when they are socially distanced? And if you are the defendant, how do you know a jury won't have it in for you for demanding that they endanger themselves for your sake? I wish John would take this up in another segment sometime.
One thing John didn't mention is something that my husband and I have discussed recently. That is that in the age of Covid how do you balance jury safety with a defendant's right to a speedy trial? You just can't let everybody go until whenever this is over, and you just can't keep them in a holding cell forever either. Trials are proceeding in most places , even though the rate of community infection is higher now than it was when court houses were temporarily shuttered in March. How do you socially distance a jury? How does a jury deliberate when they are socially distanced? And if you are the defendant, how do you know a jury won't have it in for you for demanding that they endanger themselves for your sake? I wish John would take this up in another segment sometime.
