NEW ORLEANS – The federal court in the Eastern District of Louisiana is revamping its jury selection system to better ensure that jurors in civil and criminal cases reflect an accurate cross-section of the population it serves.
In a report issued at the end of 2020, the court said it was amending the way grand jurors and petit jurors are selected. Previously, the court had relied on voter registration lists while updating what’s known as the “master jury wheel” of names and addresses of qualified jurors only once every four years.
The court opted to update its plans for jury selection to allow the voter registration list to be supplemented with a database of those licensed to drive in the parishes included in the Eastern District, the court’s Dec. 18 report states. The new system will be automated in such a way as to avoid any duplication of names, according to the court’s administration.
The jury pool will also be updated more often – every two years – to be more responsive to changes in the region’s population, the report said.
Civil rights groups in recent years criticized the Eastern District and other jurisdictions for under-representing the local African-American population on juries, raising concerns about whether all citizens could obtain fair trials in the justice system.
“I believe the changes they made are a start,” Richard Bourke, director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (LCAC), told the Louisiana Record. “I applaud them for making those changes, but I fear they don’t go far enough.”
Renewing the jury pool lists every two years is helpful, Bourke said, because poorer people change their residences more often than more affluent people do. And outdated juror lists lead to under-representation of lower-income residents and young people, he said.
LCAC is a not-for-profit legal center that represents indigent individuals facing the death penalty. Bourke is also a trial attorney who has challenged a 2017 death-penalty indictment based on jury pool racial bias.
There’s no excuse for the federal courts not to address this issue, according to Bourke, adding that the Eastern District might be planning to make additional changes, such as following up on jury summonses that receive no responses or those that are not properly served.
“It’s their job to produce a fair and reasonable representation of the community,” he said.
The racial bias in the Eastern District appears to be among the worst in the nation, leading to under-representations of individuals on both civil and criminal trials and lessening people’s overall confidence in the justice system, according to Bourke.
The problem may extend to state courts and other federal jurisdiction, he said.
“I’ve looked at this in different jurisdictions,” Bourke said. “Some handle the problem better than others. … It’s a challenge for jury administrators to obtain a fair and representative jury pool.”