I had jury duty today at the Montgomery County Circuit Court. I'm no foe of jury duty; in fact, I was hopeful I'd get seated to hear a trial, despite that my schedule for next week is hectic. But I really didn't think this jury program was run well.
They called 31 people today. There were no trials scheduled. The reason the Court decided to disrupt the lives of 31 people was to prevent defense counsel in a certain class of cases from gaming the system to get a trial postponed. Here's how the system can get gamed - certain misdemeanor offenses confer a right to a jury trial or a bench trial. The Court automatically assumes that the litigant wants a bench trial; bench trials are easier, quicker, and better in the Court's view (most of the time), so it schedules a date in District Court, which only does bench trials, for the trial. But sometimes a lawyer will show up in District Court and not want to proceed that day for whatever reason. Because the Court also disfavors granting a continuance (that is, rescheduling the hearing), a lawyer can't just ask to have the hearing on another day, because that request would be denied. Instead, the lawyer asks for a jury trial, which his or her client has a right to, hoping there's no jury waiting, which would mean his case would have to be rescheduled. So, to block this move, the Court forces 30 or so folks from the community to waste a day sitting in a jury lounge until the Court is satisfied that no lawyer in District Court is going to try to get a case moved.
Things are done differently, and better, in federal court. The Court normally asks a defendant with a right for a jury trial to make an election about the kind of trial he wants several weeks before the trial is scheduled. Perhaps there's some problem in the Maryland rules that prevents this kind of election in advance, that I don't know about, but this strikes me as an eminently reasonable way to proceed.
The problem with the way the Montgomery County Circuit Court does its jury duty is that it tells all the jurors this. This has two effects: (1) jurors come to think of a jury trial right not as a significant constitutional duty having to do with our individual rights against coercive government power, but rather as a technical scheduling ploy used by underhanded lawyers, who are probably lazy because they aren't ready to go to trial on their trial date; and (2) making jurors think defense lawyers are underhanded and manipulating the system, indeed, manipulating jury service, for illegitimate ends. So, if a defense lawyer wants a jury trial for a case that originates in District Court, the very first message the jurors hear is not about how noble jury service is, etc., but rather, that the lawyer is probably being underhanded. Given that moving a jury is largely a credibility battle, the Court itself is stacking the deck in favor of the government.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm going to write a letter to the Chief Judge of the Court and share my thoughts on this. I don't know that much good will come of it.
2 comments:
Wow, that does seem improper for the court to bias jurors like that. Isn't there some case law thingy making it illegal for the court to bias jurors?
Yes, I would think there is some law on that. Though it may be one of those things that you don't know, because no judge is inclined to let jurors know that he or she doesn't think well of defense counsel before the trial starts. Or maybe state court is just different. I don't know.
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