Abstract
Problem statement: The sixth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to be tried by an impartial jury of peers and the question of what constitutes an "impartial" jury has spawned constitutional controversies in the last several decades as the population of the United States became more ethnically and racially diverse. The Supreme Court has consistently held that an "impartial" jury is a jury chosen from a venire, or jury pool, fairly representative of the community's demographics and this became known as the fair, cross-section requirement for the venire. Federal and state governments have traditionally relied on voter registration lists as their venire source and scholars have argued that the venire source must expand beyond voter registration lists in order to better represent minority groups and thus to meet the fair, cross-section requirement mandated by the Supreme Court. In this study, we examined whether state and federal governments have expanded their venire sources to attain a more representative venire. Approach: To determine whether the federal and state governments have expanded their venire source lists we compiled federal and state requirements on jury source lists. To obtain federal source lists, we analyzed the most recent court orders specifying jury sources to be used in the districts. To determine states' venire sources, we compiled and analyzed the jury venire statutes of fifty states. Results: Interestingly, we found that states were more proactive in expanding their venire source lists. A majority of federal districts continue to solely rely on voter registration lists as their venire source while a majority of states are supplementing voter registration lists with other lists, such as drivers' license records. Some of the states have completely discarded the usage of voter registration lists as their venire source. Conclusion: Mapping of federal rulings and state statutes reveal that the majority of jurisdictions in the United States continue to primarily rely on the voter registration list as their venire source.
Highlights
The right to be tried by an impartial jury of peers is considered to be one of the most fundamental rights of criminal defendants in the United States
We found that all federal districts, except Massachusetts who relies on its unique “resident list” for both federal and state jury venires, rely on voter registration sources to some extent and that more than 60% of the districts rely solely on this source
The results were surprising given that the federal government has initiated the movement to expand the venire source lists since 1968 with the passage of Federal Jury Selection Act (FJSA) and we expected the federal districts to be the ones with expansive source lists
Summary
At least since the 1940s, the United States Supreme Court has strove to define the meaning of an “impartial” jury and has consistently held that the trial jury itself need not be exactly representative of the jurisdiction’s demographics but the pool from which jury was chosen must be fairly representative of the community’s demographics Illinois (1990), stating that the jury pool, called the venire, must be fairly representative of the community. We attempted to determine whether and how the federal and state governments have responded to the Supreme Court’s representative jury pool requirement and its significances. We first briefly analyze the relevant Supreme Court decisions; we examine how the federal and state governments have traditionally obtained their venire source lists and how, if any, they modified their source lists
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