CrimLaw

Juries in the News:

(1) In California a jury pool is found unconstitutional because it does not have enough Hispanics.

(2) In Florida localities are being discouraged from calling an adequate number of potential jurors because of financial concerns:

The memo suggests administrators call in no more than 50 jurors for death penalty cases and no more than 30 for life felony trials. . . [D]eath penalty cases normally require more than 100 jurors and life felony trials commonly use 60 jurors.

(3) In Alabama, where jury expenses are "$3 million of the [judicial] system's more than $140 budget," the government is trying to make up its budget shortfall by cutting $1 million from juries and $11 million from the rest of the system. That's a 33% cut from the jury system and a 8% cut for the rest of the system. Does this disturb anyone other than me?

(4) You just simply cannot send your jury summons back to the judge with an expletive scrawled across it.