Lack of Young Jurors Spurs Legal Tussle : Age Used by Lawyers in Challenge to S. D. Juries

In an unusual constitutional challenge, the Federal Defenders office in San Diego has filed a motion asserting that a 19-year-old charged in a federal drug case cannot get a fair trial in San Diego because federal court jury pools contain too few young adults.

“The unique perspectives and shared experiences of young adults simply cannot be represented adequately by their elders,” the lawyers argued in a brief submitted to U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving. The lawyers said they plan to present evidence at a Dec. 5 hearing to show that the views of young adults are “clearly different” from those of their elders on such issues as drugs, the police, the courts and marriage.

The challenge is based on the results of a computer analysis by a professor at San Diego State University who found that while 17.8% of the population in the federal court’s Southern District is 18 to 24 years old, only 9.3% of the people who report for jury duty are in that age group. The Southern District covers San Diego and Imperial counties.

‘Turbulent Period of Life’

“We all go through that late adolescent period, but it’s difficult to recapture the way you felt when you were that age,” said John R. Weeks, the sociology professor who conducted the study for the Federal Defenders office earlier this year. “Even the most stable person will almost certainly have their most turbulent period of life roughly in that age range.”

Weeks, administrative director of the International Population Center at San Diego State, has conducted a number of similar studies over the years, but they generally focused on exclusion of racial minority groups from jury pools. However, Weeks said he thinks the exclusion of young adults from juries raises questions of fairness similar to those raised when blacks and Hispanics, who may have a particular way of looking at the world, are excluded. The nation’s courts have generally held that jurors may not be systematically excluded on the basis of race.

“We know that criminals are, disproportionately, young people,” Weeks said. “When juries are disproportionately void of people of the same age as the people who are on trial, then it’s pretty clear that the person on trial is not going to be tried by a group of individuals who share the same perspective on the world.”

The lack of young jurors has resulted, in large part, from the practice of picking federal court jurors solely from voter registration lists, according to the brief submitted by Janice D. Hogan and Bernard G. Skomal, both lawyers in the Federal Defenders office. Statistics show that people 18 to 24 have a poor record of registering to vote, the lawyers point out, and therefore escape jury service.

Many who do register to vote are not summoned because the courts fail to update their lists frequently enough, according to Weeks’ study, and those who are summoned often are excused because they are college students who cannot afford to miss too many classes. Further, a large number of young adults who are contacted by the court do not bother to respond to jury questionnaires and summonses, Weeks added.

Want New Jury Pool

Hogan and Skomal have asked that Irving order the court clerk’s office to select a new venire--a pool of potential jurors--with enough 18- to 24-year-olds to represent their proportion in the general population.

They made the request in the case of Fabian Martinez-Gonzalez, 19, a student from Tijuana who was arrested May 24 at the San Ysidro border crossing when U.S. Customs Service inspectors found 188.9 kilograms of marijuana in the 1985 Mercury Gran Marquis he was driving. He has been charged with importing illegal drugs with intent to distribute them.

“My argument is that what’s crucial with jury selection is that all attitudes in the community are being represented,” Hogan said, adding that young people take a different view on drug use than do older groups.

“Young people are not as maniacal about it,” Hogan said. “They believe courts do deal too harshly with some criminals.” Many people on juries in San Diego are retired military personnel who are likely to be tough in drug-related cases, she said.

“Most of the felonies we deal with are drug felonies, so to have youth on a jury is important to us. They see that there is a difference between occasional use and abuse. With adults there is no difference. A user is a user is a user.”

Misjudging Youth?

Assistant U.S. Atty. Roger W. Haines Jr., who filed a brief objecting to the Federal Defenders’ motion, said last week he thinks the lawyers may be misjudging the younger generation and that the idea that young people make better jurors for the defense is outdated. He pointed to recent polls that indicated that a majority of young people consider themselves Republicans and supported George Bush’s presidential candidacy.

“As far as juries go, I would suggest that young people are as conservative (as older people), are just as good government jurors, and not any better a defense juror than anybody else,” Haines said.

In the past, courts have rejected attempts to challenge jury composition on the basis of age groups and the case law on the matter appears to be heavily on the government’s side.

“The courts have uniformly rejected arguments that age is a cognizable group for jury selection purposes,” Haines said.

Establishing Recognition

“I admit it’s going to be a very tough argument,” Hogan said. But the key decisions on the issue are more than a decade old and may be ripe for reconsideration, she said. In particular, the war on drugs has become a national priority in the last decade and is an issue that divides young and old, she said.

The key problem, Hogan said, will be convincing the court that young adults are a sector of the community that is sufficiently large and distinct from other groups. For a long time, blacks and other groups were not considered large and distinct from others, Hogan said.

“Youth aged 18 to 24 years share a common perspective arising from their life experience in that age group,” Hogan argued. “No other members of the community are capable of adequately representing the views and perspectives of that group. . . . They are in a transitional period. They are establishing themselves as adults.”

The problem might be solved, at least in part, if the federal courts began utilizing Department of Motor Vehicles records in addition to voter records, said Weeks, of SDSU. State courts use DMV information, giving them a larger and more up-to-date list from which to choose, he said.

“The lists get old so you don’t have new young people being added to the list,” Weeks said, adding that at times the list used in San Diego is so outdated that there are no 18-year-olds on it at all. The large number of young people who ignore summonses for jury service generally find that there are no repercussions, he said, adding that “The sheriff doesn’t come out to get you.”

Lists Updated Every 2 or 4 Years

Gladys Sanchez, the jury administrator for the Southern District, said the voting list used by the courts in San Diego is updated every two years. Some federal districts update only every four years, she added.

The two-year-policy, while better than some, still means that by the end of the period the 18- and 19-year-olds who were on the list have turned 20 and 21, and no new 18- and 19-year- olds have been added.

Sanchez said college students are frequently granted deferrals, which must be approved by Irving, because they cannot afford to miss too many classes. Other young people are excused because they are working at low-paying jobs for employers who do not pay them while they are on jury duty. The $30-a-day jury pay would be a hardship for many, she said.

The district rarely has problems getting enough jurors, but on rare occasions federal officers have been dispatched to locate jurors who do not show up for duty, she added.

Policy changes would have to originate with Irving, who oversees the jury pools in the Southern District. Irving declined to discuss the issue while the motion is pending before him.