Reforms designed to reduce racial bias in trial jury selection advance
“The feeling was on the task force that people who have paid their debt to society, regardless of how long an imprisonment that is or how long it’s been since they were convicted ... they shouldn’t be categorically barred because it’s such an essential part of being a citizen.”
A set of recommendations that would reform the way Connecticut trial juries are selected, including allowing recent felons and non-citizens to serve as members of a jury, received its first approval Tuesday from state lawmakers.
Thejudiciary committee advanced the bill with Democrats’ overwhelming support and senators and representatives voted largely along party lines during the committee meeting
The bill includes a series of reforms designed by a task force of the state’s top judges and attorneys to make the system used by the courts to seat juries for both civil and criminal cases more racially and economically diverse by expanding whocan serve and making it easier to do so.
“It is a really groundbreaking piece of work to move our jury selection system forward and it had the widespread support of the task force,” said Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford, who served on the task force.
The recommendations were born of a study ordered in the Connecticut Supreme Court decision in State v. Evan Jaron Holmes, in which Holmes appealed his 2019 manslaughter and home invasion convictions by arguing a Black person had been excused from the jury pool, thereby denying himafair trial. Thecourt upheld the convictions but ordered a study of racial discrimination in the state’s jury selection system.
The ensuing task force was led by Superior Court Judge OmarWilliams and retired state Supreme Court Chief Justice Chase Rogers with a litany of attorneys representing different disciplines. The group met for six months last year, studying court and jury data to develop about a half-dozen recommendations to increase equity in the system.
Chief among those suggestions is to expand who qualifies for jury duty to include non-citizens and anyone convicted of a felony who has been released from prison, according to the recommendations. Currently, felons are prohibited from serving on a jury within seven years of their conviction.
“The feeling was on the task force that people who have paid their debt to society, regardless of how long an imprisonment that is or how long it’s been since they were convicted ... they shouldn’t be categorically barred because it’s such an essential part of being a citizen,” Blumenthal said.
But Republican members of the judiciary committee disagreed, arguing the change is not justified and could put people with a bias against the prison system into jury pools inappropriately, especially for anyone still on probation or parole, they said.
“I find that a lot of the bills we deal with this session have to do with erasing; erasing the past, erasing the fallout from one choosing to break the law,” said Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford. “It’s interesting, I guess it’s a comment upon policy and society and this legislature, that one who has just been let out of prison yesterday can serve on a jury within months” if they get a summons right away.
Committee co-chair Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, emphasized the new rules would simply make those new people eligible to serve — attorneys and judges could still choose not to select them for a jury under the state’s trial rules.
Therecommendations endorsed Tuesday also include raising the age at which seniors can opt out of serving to 75 from its current 70 and increasing compensation for parttime or unemployed jurors to minimum wage and boosting the reimbursement for travel and child care costs.
Taken together the recommendations would help the judicial branch seat more diverse juries, giving both more people an opportunity to participate in the process and defendants a jury that more closely resembles their actual “peers,” lawmakers said.
“Afair trial by a jury of one’s peers is at the heart of our system of justice,” Williams and Rogers wrote to the committee. “Aside from taxation and voting, jury service for manyof our residents is their only personal connection to our courts, and to our government. It shapes their view of our democracy ... Our democracy is only as fair as our trials, and our juries are only as fair as our selection process.”
— Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford