Encouraging Jury Service

In Civil Procedure, we spend a lot of time teaching students how to determine when the Seventh Amendment provides a right to juries in civil trials, but very little time talking about how juries actually function and why they are important. In studying post-trial motions, we focus on debates about whether small amounts of circumstantial evidence are sufficient to create a fact issue and whether apparently aberrant verdicts allow the imposition of a new trial.  The result can be that law students, despite legal training, share the public's general misconception about jury competence, which in turn may make them avoid jury trials as lawyers and encourage clients to fear juries.

But whatever we do in law school, the prejudice is out there. Bad joke: the problem with juries is that people who serve on them are too stupid to get out of jury duty. It's disrespectful to the many people who understand that jury service is important to the rule of law, an important political right, and personally rewarding. It also ignores the substantial body of empirical evidence that juries mostly get it right.

Nevertheless, the nugget of truth that makes the joke work is that sinking feeling we get when we receive a jury summons, and the reality that many jurisdictions have very high no-show rates. The system would function better if summoned jurors would appear and if the pool of potential jurors better reflected a cross section of the community.  Are there measures that court systems could take to increase participation?  Absolutely. Many are identified in the ABA's Principles for Juries and Jury Trials (Principle 2). This blog entry will focus on three ways to get more people to the courthouse.

1.  Who gets summoned? The choice of sources used to create master jury lists (aka jury source lists or jury wheels) affects both the size and composition of the pool. Voter registration and drivers license lists (the two most common sources) are not reliably updated. Use of these lists results in a large (often about 20%) number of undeliverable summonses, and it leads to a pool that tends to over-exclude young, poor, and urban citizens. What might be more reliable? New York, for example, also uses addresses of state income tax filers and the recipients of unemployment insurance and family assistance benefits. Those are addresses that the recipients have a strong incentive to keep current.

2.  Can people afford to serve? Juror pay also deters many people from showing up when summoned. When I was on a jury and spent four days at the courthouse, I had to rearrange my schedule but still got paid. For those who get paid only while working, however, especially those with little extra room in the family budget, jury duty is a hardship.  Take a look at this list of jury fees -- there's not a state that pays enough to compensate even a minimum wage worker for a lost day of work. This, too, is apt to skew the composition of empaneled juries.

3. Can we allay anxieties? The first two suggestions are politically difficult (admitting that something as simple as choosing an address list implicates political and social policies) and expensive (increasing juror pay to income replacement would be extraordinarily costly). But some people avoid jury service because they don't know how to drive downtown and park, don't know what to expect, and fear a long, boring day in an uncomfortable chair. That barrier to service can be addressed with a combination of internet communication and actual amenities. Not free, but very doable.  Watch this excellent YouTube video, Jury Service 101, from the Mecklenburg County, NC courts. In addition to a street level view of where to park and where to report, it notes that jurors have access to a comfy kitchen area, business center, fresh air balcony, game room, movies (and popcorn!), and free onsite child care. This well produced video could be a model for court systems around the country.

As an academic, I'm going to rethink how I teach my students about the role of juries and the judge/jury relationships. As a citizen, I'm going to advocate more juror-friendly policies.  Join me?