If any place in America reminds us of the life we enjoyed under King George, it’s Connecticut. No, not all of it, but at least that part from Stamford to Greenwich, where gentility and wealth are still appreciated over afternoon tea. That Gideon, of A Public Defender, is only allowed to drive through this area on major interstate highways is demonstrable proof.
This sense of belonging gives rise to Gid’s peculiar sensitivity toward those called in to serve on juries, or as mythology calls it, a jury of one’s peers. In Greenwich, most jurors bear the first name of Muffy or Biff. Their last names never end in vowels. Never. This is one of the reasons Gid became incensed about the reaction to Georgia’s effort to expand its jury pool to include the possibility that a defendant might have a fighting chance of a jury of his peers.
The State of Georgia is such a frustrating contradiction: they have no money and the worst public defender system in the country and then they go and rebuild it and make it extremely effective and then it crumbles under the weight of a few capital appeals and returns to the race to the bottom, turning into a model of what not to do. And then they pass legislation like The Jury Reform Act of 2011 which :
allows court officials to compile a statewide database from a variety of sources – not just from voter registration rolls – to ensure defendants are more likely to be judged by their peers.
The fact that juries are never made up of defendants’ “peers” is a long running sad joke in the criminal justice system. I once naively asked a co-worker why we didn’t see more urban youth in our panels. Because they don’t register to vote, obviously. Voter registration records are where jury pools are typically drawn from, which limits, in a sense, the pool to only those who bother to register to vote. But that eliminates an percentage of the citizenry who do and should have the right to participate in the civic process.
Voter registration is a great way to include people in the pool of potential jurors. It creates an easily accessed database of people with the vital information necessary to determine the qualification to serve on a jury. It’s only flaw is that it doesn’t include people who aren’t registered to vote. But then, if they can’t be bothered to perform their civic duty, doesn’t that tell us that they aren’t, well, “our type” of people?
But Georgia has decided to use advancements in technology to expand the jury pool beyond those who register to vote, to “more accurately reflect the demographic makeup of our communities.” The Jones’ sat in their solarium in Round Hill, sipping mojitas in a tip of the hat to their excellent gardener, aghast at the prospect that this could spread.
In Georgia, all was not well with this concept.
When courts summon everyone who meets the minimum requirements for sitting on a jury – that they are county residents at least 18 years old and not convicted felons – there’s a potential of “diluting” jury pools, said Athens attorney Harry Gordon, who served as district attorney for Clarke and Oconee counties for nearly three decades.
“There’s a possibility (the new law) could open up jury service to every Tom, Dick and Harry, and that could diminish the validity of the jury system,” Gordon said. “If it liberalizes people that get on juries, it’s possible you could find more undesirable jurors, but it’s going to have to be tried because it’s the law, and we’ll just have to wait and see if it works more efficiently or not.”
I don’t suspect Gordon is really too concerned about Tom, Dick or Harry being undesirable, meeting only the minimum requirements for jury duty. No, my bet is it’s Leroy or Jose that he is really talking about.
When someone goes to trial and turns around to look at the venire available to him, and just happens to notice that no one in the room bears much of a resemblance, whether by color, age or attire, the true meaning of a jury of one’s peers sinks in. A defendant often can explain why he did what he did, or didn’t do, within the parameters of his experience. All the other people on 168th Street and Amsterdam Avenue completely understand what he’s talking about, and when he asked them about his defense, told him that there is no way he could be convicted.
Sadly, neither Muffy nor Biff, nor Tom, Dick or Harry, has ever stepped foot on 168th Street, eastside or west. The only time their limes come from a bodega is when their excellent gardener purchases them to save Muffy’s housekeeper a trip to the organic market.
While the Georgia law is well intended, it’s not likely to have a significant impact on improving the composition of the jury pool to better reflect the demographic makeup of the community. You can’t send people notification of jury duty when they have no address, or their mailbox has been broken for years, or the postman doesn’t go to their neighborhood. They will never know of their inclusion in the official makeup of the venire.
That’s the good thing about undesirables. They tend to exclude themselves regardless of what opportunities are offered them. Muffy and Biff got themselves in a lather over nothing.
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People just love to pick on the “gold coast” of Fairfield County, CT. Well, let me just say this about that: Being a native of Greenwich myself and having spend much of my life there, I can assure you the town has a long-standing, well-entrenched working class/middle class of many nationalities of which Italians are most prominent. Even Jews are permitted. The local synagogue was in fact torn down and rebuilt at extravagant expense about twenty years ago. They must know a thing or two about Greenwich, although I’m sure they otherwise lay low. Ha!
You don’t like it when people stereotype the Jewish race and homeland. Well, this WASP doesn’t like it when you stereotype his hometown of Greenwich. You must understand, many purportedly wealthy folks move to Greenwich after they made their fortunes somewhere else. Leona Helmsley comes to mind. I even communicated with her lifetime.
I say, purportedly, because some of these so-called wealthy folks who move to our fair town are actually crooks and/or have a negative net worth. TrumpMaster comes to mind. He should stick to his knitting. (The Art of the Deal should really be The Art of the Steal!)
The appeal of places like Greenwich has mainly to do with it being a nice, safe town to live in with a large Grand List and low property taxes. (As opposed to some dump like Bridgeport or New Haven, which have the opposite.) And by the way, we Greenwich folks tend to condescend to StaMford types, StaMford being a “city” and not a “town.” StaNford is somewhere on the Left Coast I believe.
How curious that you, of all people, defend Fairfield County. Though you are mistaken about my disliking the stereotype of the Jewish race. I’m more concerned about the Jewish religion, but even that said, I’m no more concerned about Jewish jokes than I am about lawyer jokes. I prefer not to take the feminist approach to humor.
Thank you for pointing out my misspelling of Stamford. I’ve corrected it.
The Feminist Approach to Humor? Did not know there was a feminist approach. Or maybe that was the point?!? You imply a morphological distinction between the Jewish race and the Jewish religion. There you go again with your lawyerly parsing of words. I’m not smart enough to go there! It’s a waiting minefield for the mentally challenged non-lawyers amongst us.
Do you notice the words “reply to this” in blue at the bottom of my comment? That applies to you and makes it much, much easier for others to follow a thread.
In New York’s Suffolk County the sheriff created the jury pool from available driver’s licenses on what he thought was the perfectly reasonable grounds that public transportation was so awful that the only way to get to any of the courthouses was to drive there.
And some people say that sheriff’s aren’t thoughtful.
I live in a heavily Republican county in Southwest Kansas where the County Attorney, a Republican and a high school wrestling coach before he went to law school, excludes Democrats from juries. Or at least he excludes active, known Democrats.
He told me “Democrats can’t be trusted.” I suggested perhaps Democrats were too smart to fall for inadequate proof and testilies. “Nope, they just can’t be trusted.” He was partially joking with me, but he seems to believe convictions are harder to obtain if the jurors are Democrats. I know of no evidence to support his opinion, but he does exclude Democrats.
And he gets past a Batson challenge?
Hey Paul,…”Do you notice the words ‘reply to this’ in blue at the bottom of [SHG’s] comment? That applies to you and makes it much, much easier for others to follow a thread.”
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!?! I think we have a problem here, Houston. Like I said before: Rules were meant to be broken. It’s all a question of who gets to break the rules, under what circumstances, and in which jurisdiction. Right, DSK?
Touche!
As far as I know, there has been no challenge. His policy is not well known; strictly an insider thing. I was curious, discussed it with a district judge who told me excluding Democrats was probably going on. I then asked the Assistant County Attorney who does most of the criminal trials. This fellow confirmed the story but added that he himself was not concerned about Democrats on juries, just his boss. This assistant related how the County Attorney would look over a voir dire panel list and say “you know so-and-so is a Democrat.”
I then asked the County Attorney in the chambers of the same judge who told me he thought Democrats (at least prominent Democrats or at least Democrats seen as “liberals”)were excluded by peremptory challenges.
The County Attorney replied as I have stated.
So far, there has been no challenge Batson or otherwise. Few people know about this and far fewer seem to care.
You are quite right, though you, being a more regular commenter, should know better than someone who is commenting for the first time. Are my expectations of you too high?
How would I know that Paul is commenting for the first time? I’m no mind-reader or idiot savant! As for me being a “regular,” that’s a laugh and half. You yourself said that you only posted 10% of my submissions. That’s hardly “regular.” If my morning obligations, by comparison, were only 10%, I’d be in deep doodoo, for real and headin’ for the hospital!
No hard feelings!?! P.S., I am a “regular” on a prominent CT CDL’s blogsite which will not be named at this time. (Starts with a P.) I am a CT-native after all, but here in Mass., I’m a fish out of water, if you catch my drift? (Am a Yankee fan at heart and tawk more like a nue yawka! Need I say more?)
You aren’t supposed to know. That’s why I keep track and nudge some people and not others. And while only 10% of your comments appear, you leave sufficiently frequent comments (whether they appear or not) to be a regular. Not as much a regular as at Norm’s blog, but a regular nonetheless.
So does this fall within the realm of ‘convicted by technicality’?
I long ago came to the conclusion that the bitter phrase ‘he got off on a technicality’ was probably window-washing of something like “The cops beat the ‘Mexican Piss’ (direct quote from a badge on the scene during the beating) out of him and then rifled through his belongings without asking to search and without a warrant, and then put him in a warm room for 19 hours with no video camera and made him sign a piece of paper that they had nicely written for him, to save him the trouble.”
You see a lot of bashing of CDLs from people who really don’t know what goes on in ‘The System’, and you can tell from talking to them that they automatically envision the average prosecutor as standing on a pedestal, protecting them from the hordes of murderous psychopaths out there.
I think being a psychopath is probably a huge asset for a prosecutor.