Via the N-G (http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2008/04/17/white_women_lead_jury_makeup)
For the third year in a row, more white women than any other demographic group sat in judgment of defendants in Champaign County court cases.
The over-representation of white women and the non-existence of Asian males in the jury pool were among the findings of the fourth annual report of the Champaign County Courtwatching Project.
Well they use outdated information to get jurors. My husband got served here when he was living and working in another state. He was registered to vote there, had a driver's license there, and an apartment lease. He had never actually lived at the address here where they sent the notice (it is where I live but is in my name only). When I tried to tell them he was not a Champaign County resident, they said he would have to appear before the judge to be dismissed. So he just took two weeks off and served. But he is a white male, so he did not help the demographics any.
I have been called 4 or 5 times - I was in the pool this week as a matter of fact.
Is the random-selection feature ever overrode by a history-of-service feature?
I'm wondering if it would be possible to check out the computer system that picks prospective jurors - I've been curious about how exactly it works. There are some non-random things about IL driver's license numbers - a couple of digits correspond to your year of birth, and another digit is one range for males and another for females.
This online application that uses an algorithm to calculate DL numbers is interesting (and seems to be accurate):
http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/numbers/dl_us_shared.html
Sometimes, "random number" generators aren't really so random at all - I wonder if this could be the case with the Champaign County system.
I served once when in my early 20's. Then I was called when my son was 2 years old and I was excused because I had no child care. That was 25 years ago and I have not been called since.
Overrode?
over-ridden?
You know - if you get picked randomly, but then some second filter sees that you have already served X number of times and you get dropped off the list....
What does the County need to do to get these "Minorities" on a jury?
# 1 Register to vote.
# 2 Have a valid drivers license.
#3 Be of legal age and be a resident of the County.
No where on any of these documents are you asked what race you are, that would be "racist"
So how in the hell is the County supposed to know how many minorities to call??
In the NG story they said the County sent out 18000 questionnaires and over 8000 were not returned, Why not and by whom? These people are not on juries because they don't want to be on one. Most are culled in the interview process, the ones that show up that is . "Have You ever had contact with the Police?" "Yes I got pulled over for having a loud stereo and the cop pissed me off" " "OK your excused" or " I hate cops" "OK your excused" "Or I hate Judges or Lawyers or any thing else to get out of jury duty. Beckett has about as much business talking about Justice as Bill Clinton does talking about marital fidelity, or Ted Kennedy talking about women's rights! Beckett has helped more felons stay off death row than most Judges see in a lifetime, Anyone remember the Citizens Bank Robbery and Murder in Decatur of Bank Guard Donald Bivens in the early 70's??? ask Beckett about that one!
If your last five digits on your IL DL are this 64247 you wil know that the person is born in 1964 that they are a male ( if it was a female, the number for the last 3 is between 601 and 966) males are between 001 and 366) to get the persons date of birth, you take 31 into 247 that means in this case that it goes in 7 times and has a carryover of 30. since you know that it cant be in the same month, that you need to go to the next month, you add 1 to the 7 and get 8. so the person was born 8/30/64.
the first digits deal with your name minus vowels or some such nonsense,.
Stay classy, Gregg!
I have voted in this county for 32 years and received my first form about being on a jury last year. I have yet to be called but hopefully I will be able to perform my civic duty before I die in the State I was born in.
On April 17th, 2008 at 08:49 PM, xian said:
Stay classy, Gregg!
I don't think you know anything the local justice system, Champaign's or Chicago's other than you hate cops, and you had to wait a few hours for the cops to show up after a burglary. I know you were raised not to trust the police. That's not my problem. Most of these people that are not on juries are the same way, they choose not to participate in the justice system, by not responding to the questionnaires or not showing up for jury duty, Like I posted eariler they don't ask what race you are when you get a voter registration card or a drivers license, the very things they use to call the prospective jurors, so how do they know who they are calling???
In recent years, I've been called twice in the County in which I last lived in 1993, but never in Champaign County.
<shrugs>
I have been registered to vote in Champaign since 1979 and have never been called, You have a better chance of winning the pick 4 lottery than being called.
"I don't think you know anything the local justice system, Champaign's or Chicago's other than you hate cops,"
That's enough, Gregg.
"You have a better chance of winning the pick 4 lottery than being called."
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
No, the lottery is for Rednecks and others that don't have 401ks
How does regarding police with some well supported suspicion mean that I "don't want to participate in the justice system"? I would absolutely love to serve on a jury, and as you know, I'm pretty even-handed and empathetic as far as judgment goes (modest too!).
If your last five digits on your IL DL are this 64247 you wil know that the person is born in 1964 that they are a male ( if it was a female, the number for the last 3 is between 601 and 966) males are between 001 and 366) to get the persons date of birth, you take 31 into 247 that means in this case that it goes in 7 times and has a carryover of 30. since you know that it cant be in the same month, that you need to go to the next month, you add 1 to the 7 and get 8. so the person was born 8/30/64.
the first digits deal with your name minus vowels or some such nonsense,.
The first few digits are the soundex code of your last name and then the three digits after that are an encoding of your first name and middle initial. Just out of curiousity, is it possible that some names are more likely to belong to black people and others to whites?
Random number generation is a surprisingly difficult task. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator
A software glitch seems more plausible to me than a conspiracy, but I'm not sure if there's any way of evaluating it, since the county apparently uses a proprietary system.
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin." --John von Neumann
There are ways of doing this (pesudo) randomly: pick people based on the day of the year they were born, for example. Or just put all the names in the computer equivalent of a hat and pick them out one by one.
My guess is that any systematic bias here is from some other source. Last time I was on a jury, I think they asked if attending court would pose any significant hardship on a juror. If, say, white women were more likely to be middle-class and homemakers, then they might be less likely to have such a hardship than a black single parent that can't afford to miss a day of work.
Does a previous criminal arrest/conviction disqualify someone from serving on a jury? I notice from the article that 56% of defendants were black. It may just be that there are fewer blacks in the pool of eligible jurors than in the population at large.
"Does a previous criminal arrest/conviction disqualify someone from serving on a jury?" + "...there are fewer blacks in the pool of eligible jurors." = what do you think most black people are. convicts?
While 56% of the defendants are black, the percentages of those taking their cases to trial are even higher for blacks. One year Beckett's group saw 24 trials. 18 of those were against black people.
I would suggest there are no blacks, hispanics, and asians serving on juries because the defendants are usually black, hispanics, and asians. The police are mostly white, the prosecutors are mostly white. It would not help their conviction rate if more minorities were to serve on the jury. How they skirt the randomness of selection to arrive at the same kind of juries all the time is unknown.
Also unknown is how juries are deliberating, and on what basis do they reason their verdicts? Too often, prejudice influences a jury. It's troubling that former jurors aren't sharing their stories on how we can improve this system.
The judges should be forced to advise juries about Jury Nullification.
Jury nullification refers to a rendering of a verdict by a trial jury, disagreeing with the instructions by the judge concerning what the law is, or whether such law is applicable to the case, taking into account all of the evidence presented. Although a jury's refusal relates only to the particular case before it, if a pattern of such verdicts develops, it can have the practical effect of disabling the enforcement of that position on what the law is or how it should be applied. Juries are reluctant to render a verdict contrary to law, but a conflict may emerge between what judges and the public from whom juries are drawn hold the law to be, or the legitimacy of a law itself.
The jury instructions currently given (as written by Appellate Judge Bob Steigmann) is "...your verdict must be unanimous."
Jurors are given two forms to possibly fill out, Not Guilty or Guilty. But the implication by the first jury instruction is "Either we all sign Not Guilty, or we all sign Guilty."
Instead of jury nullification, which happened in the O.J. case and is an unreliable way to arrive at justice, jurors should be advised they retain the right to disagree with their fellow jurors. Currently, the instructions are misleading by insisting jurors can't leave the deliberation room until everybody signs one way or another.
The fact that jurors are allowed to not reach a unanimous verdict remains unsaid in the instructions. Perhaps instructing the jury to only arrive at a unanimous verdict is a way to discourage hung juries and mistrials, but anyone serving on a jury has the right to disagree with the majority. The jury instructions are infringing on that right.
"These people are not on juries because they don't want to be on one. Most are culled in the interview process, the ones that show up that is . 'Have You ever had contact with the Police?' 'Yes I got pulled over for having a loud stereo and the cop pissed me off.' 'OK your excused' or 'I hate cops' 'OK your excused' 'Or I hate Judges or Lawyers or any thing else to get out of jury duty.' "
Great summary of the racial profiling traffic studies of our local police departments the past 3 years. Is the above the reasons minorities are not retained on juries? And why is it important to have minorities on juries in the first place?
The fact is, as revealed by Gregg's insightful comments, we have two types of law enforcement going on in Champaign County: one for the white middle class who will likely be called upon to serve as jurors, in which case, the police are always kind and helpful; the other type of law enforcement for the poor and minorities, fraught with illegal search and seizures, use of paid informants, fabricated police reports, and sometimes police violence. But don't take my word for it, ask any minority in this county what they think of how local law enforcement treats them....
...therefore, there is no way this state's attorney's office is going to be okay with more minorities serving on juries. Beckett is swimming up against the Difanis Regime with protege Julia doing Daddy Difanis' bidding. Emboldening defendants with the opportunity to have cases heard by their actual peers is not something this legal system is interested in and it would be much more efficient if the Law Professor would shut up.
Um, did you read Gregg's comment carefully? He begins by saying, "These people are not on juries because they don't want to be on one," and ends with "...or any thing else to get out of jury duty." He's saying that if someone really doesn't want to serve, it's not too hard to say something that will get you excused.
Rietz and Beckett seem to get along fine, and I doubt that the law school's Courtwatch program is any skin off the state's attorney's nose.
Um, did you answer any questions posed?
Minorities feel targeted by the local criminal justice system, so they don't show up to for that system. Whatever Gregg's made-up reasons are, they do in fact reflect the prevailing opinion among minorities, whether he was joking or not. I've seen whites make up reasons to be dismissed off the jury and kept anyway.
Rietz does not want more minorities on the juries, and Beckett is no help. The embarrassment that is our system gets highlighted when the demographics of our population doesn't match the defendant demographics and the jury demographics.
The theory that crime is like popcorn and happens at random and that juries are selected at random is blown out of the water by the real stats. Blacks are targeted for arrest and prosecution, whites are favored and put on the juries. Go to the courthouse sometime and see it for yourself.
"The theory that crime is like popcorn and happens at random and that juries are selected at random is blown out of the water by the real stats. Blacks are targeted for arrest and prosecution, whites are favored and put on the juries. Go to the courthouse sometime and see it for yourself."
What about the Asian men? If white people don't like blacks and that makes "the system" want to put them on a jury, Asians would be even better.
I wonder if there are any Asians here (besides Xian!) who would like to respond to the last comment above this one.
{Not that we don't love you, Xian, I'm just willing to bet I can take a pretty good guess at what your answer will be to anon 3:35.}
Wayward writes: "Rietz and Beckett seem to get along fine, and I doubt that the law school's Courtwatch program is any skin off the state's attorney's nose."
At the recent fundraiser for County Board member Brandon McGinty, attendees included state's attorney Rietz and Steve Beckett. Observers at the event saw both spending most of their time at the intimate gathering standing away from each other, and neither did the two speak to each other one time. Odd that a lawyer who worked at the firm of the boss that hired her would not exchange at least pleasantries, don't you think?
As Beckett prepared to exit the building, he looked across the room, and in his "trial voice" said for all to hear, "Nice talking to you, Julia!"
I would think our much respected county prosecutor would find such childish behavior from a law professor to be quite inappropriate. I re-submit as well, that the Courtwatch program Beckett keeps making press waves with is irritating (note today's snide editorial in the Sunday, April 27 News-Gazette) to Rietz- who doesn't need the suggestion of unfairness, racism, and prejudiced juries coming from His Emminence Steve Beckett during an election year.
Perhaps she needn't worry about Beckett's little law students nosing around the courtrooms (she won't ever let them count the racial demographics of those sent to prison in a given year anyway), as she will likely stomp the spineless Miller-Jones in the upcoming election this November. And while Rietz will parade around the county with a manly posture of "tough on crime" (against black people) for the Republicans and the News-Gazette/Noveau Business Class to accept (with little Democratic support), Her Majesty's Royal Highness Queen Emperoress of the County continues to alienate former colleagues and supporters. Why?
By the way, has anybody seen Al's gun and know how much extra officer time did the taxpayers get billed looking for it? Hopefully all those officers trolling the ditches of Curtis Road were kind enough to donate their time.
Anon at 12:54 am: Brendan has only had one recent fundraiser, and it was yesterday. Laura and I were both there. You very obviously were not, and it is just as obvious that you have not spoken at any significant length to anyone who was. Your characterization of the event and the atmosphere among its attendees is profoundly mistaken and a gross misinterpretation.
"...profoundly mistaken and a gross misinterpretation"?
Oh. So the State's Attorney and the Law Professor did speak to one another then, and Beckett did not exit with "Nice talking to you, Julia!"?
Since you were there, please enlighten. I'm tired of annonymous posters reporting untrue things.
"Since you were there, please enlighten."
What actually happened was that Julia had other commitments, and didn't even arrive until the event was almost over and people were already starting to leave. As a result, she didn't get a chance to talk to most of the attendees, myself included. I certainly didn't feel snubbed, and neither did anyone else, as far as I could tell.
She and Steve didn't spend their time "standing away from each other." In fact, for most of the very brief time they were both there, Steve was sitting at a table focused on a single conservation, and he was giving that conversation his full and undivided attention.
I find it very telling that someone who claims to have such inside knowledge of a so-called "intimate gathering" doesn't even know that McGinty's name is spelled "Brendan," not "Brandon."
FWIW, Steve and Julia did have a brief but friendly conversation that afternoon. I have no idea whether Beckett later said "Nice talking with you, Julia," because it wouldn't have seemed unusual if he did.
Apparently, Steve did say that on his way out, but no one I've talked to (including Julia) who heard it took it as anything other than a friendly goodbye. Since I wasn't following them around taking notes, she also confirmed for me that they spoke more than once at the event yesterday, and that they have actually seen each other several times recently.
Laura and I were also present at the monthly Dem happy hour this past Friday, which was at Julia's house. Steve was there, as well, and everyone seemed friendly and fine.
What is the point of all this, I wonder?