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Debate rages on selection methods
YOUNGSTOWN
As the new year is about to begin, Robert G. Jackson, Mahoning County jury commissioner, is preparing for the Jan. 3 arrival of the first 150 of about 3,750 jurors, who will be summoned to the county courthouse during 2012.
“The computer did a random draw. We pulled 25,000 names” from the 182,248 registered voters on the county’s rolls, Jackson explained.
“Those names are then sent into a database, and that’s what we draw down off of during the year,” to summon about 150 jurors to the courthouse every two weeks, he said.
“We make sure that the entire county is being represented” to achieve juror diversity, he added.
In Ohio, courts may use either voter registration or Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles records, or a combination, to select jurors.
Like most Ohio courts, the county’s common pleas court uses only the voter- registration list.
“We find that we get people in here of all ages, all occupations, all walks of life,” by using that list, Jackson said.
The county has explored using a combination of voter registration and BMV lists, but Jackson said a more-diverse jury pool would “not necessarily” result from such a combination.
A study by the Williamsburg-Va.-based National Center for State Courts found “the difference was negligible,” he said. That’s why most courts just use the voter-registration list, he said.
Recently, the Ohio Legislature was considering requiring courts to use a combination of voter registration and BMV lists in selecting potential jurors through a proposed amendment to Ohio House Bill 268.
When that bill passed the House, it passed with a requirement that BMV must compile a list of licensed drivers for the courts, but the courts need not use that list. The bill now goes before the Ohio Senate.
The Ohio Jury Management Association gathered comments from judges, court clerks and administrators and jury commissioners around Ohio concerning the jury-selection methods they preferred.
Peggy A. Rice, clerk of Sandusky Municipal Court, favors using a combined list, saying it would “allow for a better pool from which to pick.”
Voter-registration lists contain many elderly people with health problems and limited mobility and some dead people, she observed.
“Hopefully, if the BMV records are also used, the age group will be expanded, and a greater number will be in better health, and, hopefully, addresses will be more current,” she added.
Judge Patricia Ann Kleri of South Euclid Municipal Court, however, opposes using the combined lists because they’re “too difficult to combine” and because “BMV addresses are not often as current as voter-registration” lists.
“Requiring a court to look at two separate sources of juror information will require expense, both in compiling the two lists and then somehow integrating them,” complained Judge Jennifer P. Weiler of Garfield Heights Municipal Court.
“Failure to integrate them will result in a duplication of names, which will frustrate jurors and courts,” she said.