The author
thanks John A. Larson and Gloria M. Gomez for providing the data used in this
report and for answering numerous questions.
John Larson is Senior Court Services Analyst at the Administrative
Office of the Courts for the State of California and Staff to the California
Task Force on Jury System Improvements.
Gloria Gomez is Director of Juror Services for the Los Angeles Superior
Court and a member of the California Task Force on Jury System Improvements.
Note on the Author
Daniel
Klerman is Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern
California Law School, where he teaches civil procedure and other
subjects. He has a J.D. and a Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago, and he clerked for Justice Stevens on the U.S.
Supreme Court and for Judge Richard Posner on the Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals.
Executive
Summary
Trial by jury is a foundation of the American legal
system, generally considered a guardian of liberty and guarantor of
fairness. It relies on the
participation of large numbers of ordinary citizens.
In the words of the California statute book,
"trial by jury is a cherished constitutional right," and "jury
service is an obligation of citizenship" (Cal. Code. Civ. Proc. § 191).
In many places, participation is widespread. In California, however, especially in large
urban centers such as Los Angeles, avoidance of jury service is common. In recent years, courts have implemented a
number of reforms, most notably the one-day, one-trial system.
Measuring the extent of jury participation and the
impact of recently implemented reforms was the goal of this report. The available evidence suggests the
following conclusions and recommendations:
Jury participation in California:
·
Jury avoidance is a serious problem in California.
·
Barely a quarter of those summoned for jury duty
actually serve.
·
More than a third of those summoned either fail to
respond or claim that service would be too much of a hardship.
·
Data collected by the courts is inadequate to assess
whether recent reforms, including the one-day, one-trial system, have improved
jury participation.
Recommendations:
·
The courts should collect and publish jury statistics
every year.
·
The courts should make old jury data available.
·
The DMV should publicize and enforce the requirement
that drivers notify it of changes of address.
·
The courts should purge the jury pool of persons not
qualified for jury service.
·
The legislature should enact a statute placing a hold
on driver's license renewals of persons who fail to respond to a juror summons.
·
The legislature should enact statutes raising juror pay
and providing tax credits to employers who pay usual compensation to workers
who are absent from work on account of jury service.
Introduction
Trial by jury is a foundation of
the American legal system, generally considered a guardian of liberty and
guarantor of fairness. It relies on the
participation of large numbers of ordinary citizens. In many places, participation is widespread. In California, however, especially in large
urban centers such as Los Angeles, avoidance of jury service is common. In recent years, courts have implemented a
number of reforms, most notably the one-day, one-trial system. Measuring the extent of jury participation
and the impact of recently implemented reforms was the goal of this
report.
Unfortunately, it is nearly
impossible to assess the success of recent reforms because of incomplete and
inconsistent data. Data for fiscal year
1999-2000 were obtained for this report only after numerous requests to the
Administrative Office of the Courts, and even these data are not complete or
entirely reliable. Data for other years
are simply unavailable. Modernization
of juror management computer systems to gather reliable jury statistics and
regular publication of those data should be an urgent priority. In addition, to the extent data from earlier
years can be extracted from existing databases, they should be made available
to researchers and the public. Without
good data, it is impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of reforms already
implemented, to assess the current state of jury participation, or to formulate
intelligent strategies to remedy the remaining problems.
The data that were available
suggest that low jury participation remains a serious problem in
California. Barely a quarter of those
summoned actually complete their service.
Low jury participation rates are the result of a number of factors,
including inaccurate address records, failure of summoned individuals to appear
at court, and large numbers of hardship excuses. The most serious problem is that jurors who were properly
summoned either did not appear or claimed that jury service would be too much
of a hardship. Nearly a third of those
summoned avoided jury duty in this way.
As a result, the system imposes a disproportionate share of the jury
service burden on those willing to serve, which means these good citizens must
serve more often. In Los Angeles, this
problem is so severe that judges predict that eligible citizens will need to be
summoned every year.
While there is no simple way to
increase jury participation, a number of reforms might help, including
publicizing and enforcing the legal requirement that drivers notify the
Department of Motor Vehicles of address changes, placing a hold on driver's
license renewals of persons who fail to respond to a juror summons, increasing
juror pay, and enacting tax credits to encourage businesses to pay employees
during jury service. Some of these proposals, such as increasing
juror pay and employer tax credits, have been recommended before, but have not
been implemented, in large part because they would require substantial
expenditure of tax money. Appropriation
of such funds requires accountability, which in turn requires the collection
and dissemination of data on jury participation to enable evaluation of the
effectiveness of such measures.
Historical
Background
Resistance to service has plagued
the jury system from its origins in medieval England. Reform efforts have periodically attempted
to remedy the problem, usually with only modest success. Most relevant to contemporary California,
there was a resurgence of interest in juror participation in the 1990s. Several states recognized that they had a
problem and attempted reforms.
As part of this movement, in 1994, the Juror Services Division of the Los
Angeles Superior Court examined various aspects of jury service and issued The Jury Report: A Blueprint for Change in
the Los Angeles County Jury System.
It recommended a number of administrative changes with the goal of
improving juror qualification rates "from 9-15% to 25%." As documented below, the Los Angeles courts
have not met this target.
A year later, the Judicial Council
of California created the Blue Ribbon Commission on Jury Service
Improvement. This body produced a
report in 1996 which concluded that "the jury system is on the brink of
collapse." It noted that "[o]ne of the most serious
problems the jury system now faces relates to low juror yields." To remedy the problem, the commission made
twenty-nine recommendations, including:
·
Use of the National Change of Address System to update
jury source lists to reduce the problem of undeliverable summonses.
·
Placing a hold on driver's license renewals of persons
who fail to respond to a jury summons.
·
Enactment of child-care programs for jurors with
responsibility for children.
·
Adoption of the one-day, one-trial system. Under this system, a prospective juror need
appear in court only a single day, unless selected as a trial juror. If the juror is not chosen on the first day,
the individual is then exempt from jury duty for a year.
·
Implementation of a telephone stand-by system, so
jurors would only have to appear in court when necessary.
·
Increasing juror fees to $40 for each day after the
first day and $50 after the thirteenth day.
·
Requiring employers to pay employees for at least three
days of jury service and provision of tax credits to employers who voluntarily
pay jurors absent for more than three days of jury service.
The Judicial Council then created a
Task Force on Jury System Improvements to oversee implementation of the
recommendations. Many of the
recommendations requiring changes in court administration have been
implemented. Twenty-four counties
comprising eighty percent of California's population now use the National
Change of Address System. All now adhere to the one-day, one-trial
policy. Los Angeles was the last to
implement this reform, completing the transition only this year. Telephone standby is now widespread.
On the other hand, only some of the
recommendations requiring legislative action have been implemented. Legislation was passed mandating the
adoption of the one-day, one-trial system,
but failure to respond to a jury summons still has no effect on driver's license
renewal. Juror fees were increased, but
only to $15 per day. No state legislation mandating or funding
child care for the children of jurors has been enacted, although some counties
have begun to provide it. No legislation requiring employers to pay
employees for jury service has been enacted, nor have tax credits to encourage
employers to do so voluntarily.
It is very
difficult to ascertain whether the reforms implemented in the last few years
have made a difference. There is some
anecdotal evidence of improvement,
but it is hard to be confident, because there is almost no data from the early
1990's to which to compare recent response rates. The only data the author has been able to find are for Los
Angeles in fiscal years ("FY") 1983-84 and 1994-95. Analysis of the data suggests that there has been no overall
improvement in jury participation.
There may have been some improvement between FY 1994-95 and FY 2000-2001, but this improvement merely offset
declines between FY 1983-84 and FY 1994-95.
Table 1 compares FY 1983-84, FY 1994-95 and FY 2000-20001 juror response
rates. Definitions of terms used in the table can be found in the Glossary on
pages 22-23.
Table 1. Comparison of Los Angeles Response to Jury
Summonses
FY 1983-84, FY 1994-95
and FY 2000-1
|
|
|
FY 1983-1984
|
FY 1994-1995
|
FY 2000-2001
|
|
|
Summons or affidavit
undeliverable
|
14.6%
|
15%
|
16.4%
|
|
|
Returned pending update
|
|
12%
|
17.8%
|
|
|
Incomplete
|
0.5%
|
|
0.8%
|
|
|
Disqualified
|
9.7%
|
10%
|
7.7%
|
|
|
Excused for hardship
|
27.7%
|
16%
|
9.8%
|
|
|
No response
|
29.4%
|
36%
|
31.3%
|
|
|
Qualified
|
18.2%
|
10%
|
16.2%
|
|
|
Persons summoned or mailed affidavits
|
963,236
|
almost 4 million
|
4,466,299
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jurors served
|
9.5%
|
5%
|
9.3%
|
Notes. FY 1983-84 data from Hiroshi Fukurai and
Edgar W. Butler, "Organization, Labor Force, and Jury Representation: Economic
Excuses and Jury Participation," Jurimetrics Journal, vol. 32, Fall
1991, p. 53. FY 1994-95 data from Final Report of the Blue Ribbon Commission
on Jury System Improvement, (1996) p. 22. FY 2000-2001 data are from
Los Angeles Jury System Fact Sheets.
See Appendix C for more on the Los Angeles data.
The overall
percentage of "jurors served" has hardly changed between FY 1983-84 and FY 2000-2001. In both years, it was between 9 and 9.5
percent. FY 1994-95, however, was very
bad, with only five percent of jurors serving. There was thus a precipitous decline between
FY 1983-84 and FY 1994-94, and then a return to the FY 1983-84 levels in FY
2000-2001. While it is possible that
jury reforms instituted in the late 1990s were responsible for the recent
increase in jury participation, without data from other years, this is hard to
confirm. In addition, it should be
noted that in FY 2000-2001, Los Angeles had not fully implemented reforms. For example, only about half of its courthouses
used the one-day, one-trial system.
Current
Participation Rates
No data on responses to jury summons are published
regularly. John Larson of the Task
Force on Jury System Improvements, however, kindly shared some of the data that
the task force has gathered. Many
counties, however, did not provide complete data to the Task Force. Either they did not collect them, or their
administrators could not get their jury management computer systems to produce
even the simplest statistics. In
addition, John Larson at the Task Force cautioned that the data which were
reported contain inconsistencies which make it hard to compare responses from
county to county. The data were not
directly derived from a single data collection system, but instead are the
result of survey questionnaires sent out to jury administrators in each
county. Each county has different
record keeping practices, and each administrator interpreted the questions
somewhat differently.
Appendix A contains data on jury
participation from all counties. To
simplify presentation, Table 2 provides data from eight eight counties from
various parts of the state. Definitions of terms used in the table can be found
in the Glossary on pages 22-23.
Table
2. Response to Jury Summonses, FY 1999-2000 and 2000-2001
|
|
Summons issuedPersons Summoned
|
Summons Undeliverable
|
Postponement Granted
|
Disqualified
|
Excused for Hardship
|
Did Not Appear
|
Qualified and
appearedCompleted Service
|
|
Alameda
|
614,766614,766
|
11.5%11.5%
|
6.7%6.7%
|
9.8%9.8%
|
9.7%9.7%
|
11.9%11.9%
|
50.4%50.4%
|
|
Humbolt
|
61,53561,535
|
32.5%32.5%
|
12.4%12.4%
|
12.3%12.3%
|
1.6%1.6%
|
40.9%40.9%
|
12.9%0.3%
|
|
Los Angeles
|
1,554,4844,466,299
|
38.7%16.4%
|
N.A.17.8%
|
21.6%7.7%
|
8.3%9.8%
|
N.A.39.0%
|
19.0%9.3%
|
|
Riverside
|
604,568604,568
|
9.5%9.5%
|
8.9%8.9%
|
10.9%10.9%
|
30.3%30.3%
|
17.3%17.3%
|
24.4%23.1%
|
|
SacramentoSan
Francisco
|
297,887956,164
|
14.3%12.8%
|
N.A.19.9%
|
16.3%17.5%
|
27.3%11.3%
|
3.7%13.0%
|
25.0%25.5%
|
|
San FranciscoSan
Joaquin
|
183,105194,622
|
12.8%11.7%
|
19.9%11.0%
|
17.5%20.6%
|
11.3%21.5%
|
13.0%16.6%
|
N.A.18.7%
|
|
San JoaquinSierra
|
174,491540
|
13.0%15.0%
|
12.2%25.9%
|
23.0%5.0%
|
24.0%3.5%
|
18.5%9.3%
|
55.3%41.3%
|
|
SierraAll
California excluding Los Angeles
|
5406,040,341
|
15.0%13.4%
|
25.9%12.7%
|
5.0%12.5%
|
3.5%13.8%
|
9.3%15.3%
|
51.9%32.3%
|
|
All California Excluding Los
AngelesAll California
|
6,755,72110,506,640
|
15.2%14.7%
|
14.0%14.9%
|
14.8%10.4%
|
17.8%12.1%
|
17.1%25.4%
|
29.0%22.5%
|
|
All California
|
8,310,205
|
20.3%
|
14.0%
|
16.1%
|
15.9%
|
17.1%
|
26.8%
|
Notes. Data
are from the Task Force on Jury System Improvements Improvements. See Appendices B and C for problems with the
data. The last two rows, which report
data for "All California," summarize data from the counties for which the data
were available.
As explained in the Appendix C, Los Angeles County
used both two-step and a one-step summonses.
The table includes prospective jurors from both systems. The column labels are therefore slightly
inaccurate for Los Angeles. The second
column label should read "Summons or affidavit undeliverable," and the last
column label should read "Persons summoned or mailed affidavits."
As can be seen, jury participation
rates tend to be very low. On average,
less thanbarely a
quarter of persons summoned appear and are qualifiedcompleted their
service. The overall figure,
however, is considerably affected by Los Angeles's dismal 9.319% rate. Even excluding Los Angeles, however, less
than a third of those summoned are qualified and
appearfulfilled their duty.
These averages, however, conceal considerable variation. In some counties, such as Los Angeles and Humbolt,
less than twenty percent of those summoned served. In some other counties,
such as Alameda and Sierra, over half of those summoned appear
and were qualifieddid.
Even the low participation figures
in the table probably overstate the extent to which citizens respond to jury
summonses. The "completed service"
column includes both those who actually appeared at court to fulfill their
obligation as well as those who were on telephone standby. Those on telephone standby were counted as
having "completed" their service even if they were never actually called to
appear. In fact, because telephone
standby systems currently in use do not record who has called in, those on
telephone standby were counted as having completed their service even if they
never telephoned to check their status.
Since about half of those recorded as completing their service did so
through telephone standby, the figures above almost certainly overstate the
extent of jury service. A significant
number of those counted as serving probably did not even telephone to see
whether their service was required and still more might not have appeared even
if they knew they had been called.
The map
below illustrates the extent of jury service in California.
[insert map here]
In other counties, such as Los Angeles and
Humbolt, less than ten percent did.
Few obvious patterns emerge from
the map or from inspection of the data.
Poor participation can be found both in northern and southern
California, and in both large and small counties. Correlation analysis, however, reveals some weak patterns. Smaller and less populous counties tend to
have greater percentages of persons who served, as do counties which have more
African Americans. On the other hand, richer counties and those with more Hispanics tend to have lower
participation rates. In only two southern California counties did
more than twenty-five percent of prospective jurors complete their jury service
while most counties with participation rates over fifty percent can be found in
the central and northern part of the state. These patterns are intriguing and require
further investigation. The most
fruitful analysis would require data on the demographic characteristics (age,
sex, race, income, etc.) of those summoned and those who served. Unfortunately, most courts do not collect
these data and none publish them.
The biggest
problem is that jurors who were properly summoned did not appear. More than a sixth of those summoned simply
ignored the call to jury duty. This problem was particularly acute in
Humbolt, where more than a third of those summoned failed to appear. As explained in Appendix C, the percentage
who failed to appear in Los Angeles was also probably over a third. If Los Angeles were included in the "All
California" figure, the overall percentage who failed to appear would rise to
over a quarter. On the other hand, in
some counties, such as Sierra and Sacramento, fewer than ten percent did not
appear. Until recently, most counties
lacked a policy of rigorously prosecuting those who fail to respond to a jury
summons, so nearly all who failed to participate did so with impunity. Only this year have localities, most notably
Los Angeles, begun to enforce jury summonses.
Another
significant problem revealed by Table 2 is inaccurate address records. Large numbers of summonses were returned by
the postal service as undeliverable. In
many counties, including nearly all the big counties, over ten percent of all
summonses did not reach the addressee. The courts mail jury summons based on
Department of Motor Vehicle lists of licensed drivers and based on voter
registration lists. These lists contain
much out-of-date and inaccurate information, including dead people and even an
occasional dog. The most serious problem, however, is drivers
who have moved. Although drivers are
legally required to report a change of address to the Department of Motor
Vehicles, this
requirement is not widely publicized, and penalties for failure to report
promptly are very seldom imposed.
Some people
responded to their summons, but were then disqualified or excused. Disqualifications are spelled out in statute
and are relatively uncontroversial. The most common reasons for
disqualification, in rough order of frequency, were non-residence in California
or in the county which summoned them, non-U.S. citizenship, limited
understanding of English, recent jury service, and loss of civil rights due to
criminal conviction. Mailing summonses to persons who are not
qu
