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by Val Ellicott
Staff Writer
In an ideal world, the men and women called for
jury duty would be smart, informed and eager to do right by a
venerated civic obligation.
But jurors in Palm Beach County are now less likely
than ever to fit that image.
Since February, when court officials threw out
their voter registration rolls and began using driver licenses to
call potential jurors, the character of jury pools has changed.
Today, the pools include more county residents who
are resentful of their obligation to serve and who feel free to
express that resentment in the bluntest terms, court officials say.
``They're like the audience from the Jerry Springer
show,'' one court reporter said. ``They can't be bothered. They're
thinking, `Just let me out of here.' ''
Jury candidates who aren't registered to vote are
younger, less educated, less affluent and more likely to have an
arrest record than candidates who are voters, a study by The
Palm Beach Post has found.
This new group's diminished sense of civic
responsibility has dismayed prosecutors, including Palm Beach County
State Attorney Barry Krischer. He said he is backing a proposal by
prosecutors elsewhere in the state to repeal the 1991 law that
created the new selection method.
``In the old days, people registered to vote
knowing they could be called for jury duty,'' Krischer said. ``Now
we're saddled with people who don't want to be there. Those people
don't make good jurors.''
Some judges also have seen changes.
``The problem is there are a lot of younger people
who appear to be saying whatever they need to say to get out of
serving,'' said Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga, who presides over civil
trials. ``And half the time, they aren't being truthful.''
Court officials say the changed character of jury
pools has made selecting juries more expensive and more time-consuming.
The Post looked
at almost 1,000 jury candidates in Palm Beach County - half drawn
last year from voter rolls and half drawn this year from driver records.
The study found that:
The non-voters studied were an average of 11 years
younger than the voters.
Non-voters were less likely to have graduated from
high school or college and they live in neighborhoods with a lower
median household income than voters.
Jury candidates who don't vote are roughly 2
percent more likely to have an arrest record than candidates who are voters.
The percentage of blacks on jury pools has
increased only slightly.
Registered voters still account for 80 percent of
the people now showing up for jury duty.
So overall, the demographics of the county's
average jury candidate haven't changed much: A typical candidate is a
white, high-school graduate with a median age of 46 and an annual
household income of nearly $50,000.
Legislators who passed the measure making all adult
drivers eligible for jury duty had hoped to expand the overall jury
pool and boost voter registration among people who hadn't registered
before to avoid jury service.
Backers of the law also promoted it as a way to
make juries more representative of their communities.
But in Palm Beach County, increased diversity is
still largely a theory.
Of the 481 jury candidates The Post picked from
driver license records, 10.4 percent were black. That represents an
increase of only 0.5 percent over the number of blacks among 480
people called for jury duty based on voter rolls. The county's
population is 14.7 percent black.
``My biggest disappointment with the new system is
that it hasn't brought in more members of minority groups,'' Labarga
said. ``I'm a firm believer in diversity and I haven't seen it.''
The change may be less than expected because
non-voters are only a small percentage of those reporting for jury duty.
In addition, non-voters do not appear to be showing
up for jury duty as often as voters - either because they ignore the
summons or they no longer live where it was mailed.
Of 124 people who did not respond to two successive
summonses for jury duty in September, half were non-voters, though
they represented only 20 percent of the jury candidates in the driver-license
study group.
Arlene Goodman, jury manager at the county
courthouse, said the number of people who don't answer a jury summons
has increased by about 15 percent since she began selecting jury
candidates from driver license records. On a few days, only a quarter
of those summoned have responded, she said.
``I have to call in more jurors now to get the
number I actually need,'' Goodman said.
That has contributed to increased postage costs of
$10,000 this budget year, she said.
The men and women who have showed up for jury duty
since February are more likely to have been arrested.
Of the people The
Post studied who were selected for
jury duty from voter rolls, 7.5 percent had an arrest record. Of
those selected from driver records, 9.6 percent had been arrested. In
most cases, the charges were dropped.
An arrest alone does not disqualify a person from
jury duty. People who have been convicted of a felony may serve if a
judge agreed to withhold a finding of guilt in their case or if their
civil rights were restored.
Other felons and people facing criminal prosecution
are not eligible to serve.
Court officials purge felons from driver license
records before randomly selecting people for jury duty. And people
selected as jury candidates are questioned at the courthouse about
whether they have a felony record or face prosecution.
The Post's study
turned up one woman who was wanted on bad-check charges at the time
she served as a juror on a civil case in May. But she had not been
served with arrest papers, so she would have been eligible for jury duty.
The newspaper also found four jurors who had
pleaded guilty or no contest to a felony, including uttering a
forgery, cocaine possession and child abuse.
In each case, a judge withheld a finding of guilt
or prosecutors dropped the case as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.
But felons and others who were ineligible to
perform jury duty have slipped through the screening process.
On Aug. 31, Circuit Judge Mary Lupo sent an e-mail
message to other judges, saying she had begun questioning jury
candidates herself.
"After finding a woman in my panel a month ago
with two warrants out for her arrest, followed by two others under
prosecution the next week, I have started asking the qualifying
questions to each panel,'' Lupo wrote. "This morning I excused a
person who is not a citizen.''
As a result of Lupo's memo, the jury manager began
questioning potential jurors more closely.
In St. Lucie County, the attorney for Tommy
Lawston, convicted in July of attempted second-degree murder, asked
for a new trial after learning the forewoman on Lawston's jury had
been convicted of felony driving with a suspended license.
A judge denied the request. Lawston's attorney,
Assistant Public Defender Peter Kenny, has appealed the judge's ruling.
Prosecutors in Palm Beach County worry the same
thing could happen here.
They say it's more difficult to keep felons off
juries now, since there's nothing to stop them from obtaining driver
licenses. (Felons are barred from voting unless a guilty finding was
withheld or their civil rights were restored.)
And felons or people charged in pending criminal
cases don't always volunteer that information - usually out of
embarrassment - when questioned by jury officials or attorneys.
``The problem is, even if you ask, `Have you ever
been convicted of a felony?' and you find out later they lied, you're
kind of out of luck,'' Palm Beach County Chief Assistant State
Attorney Paul Zacks said.
Prosecutors also fear the hostility they are seeing
in non-voters now eligible for jury duty. Those people are more
likely to blame ``the system'' for inconveniencing them, prosecutors say.
``If I was a defendant and I was guilty, I think I
would rather have someone on my jury who didn't want to be there in
the first place,'' Orange County State Attorney Lawson Lamar said
last week.
Valentin Rodriguez, a West Palm Beach attorney who
represents DUI defendants, said his clients benefit every week from
the new selection method.
``I cannot believe how many people who have DUI
arrests or convictions are on jury panels now,'' he said. ``I really
like getting those people on juries.
They know how arbitrary roadside sobriety tests are
and they're more likely to sympathize with a defendant.''
Staff researcher Michelle
Quigley contributed to this story.
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