Focus 580; The Champaign County Courtwatching Project

Something like five million Americans in this country are called for jury duty every year. However only a percentage of those people who are called actually respond for example here in Champaign County. For every hundred people who are called only about 25 show up this morning as part of focus 580 will be talking a little bit about juries about how they are selected and about how courts operate and the importance of people participating in that process in various and sundry ways particularly will be looking at this question of how it is that we make juries what can we do to make sure that juries do indeed reflect the makeup of the community and we have here in the studio with us this morning three guests two of them are associated with the League of Women Voters of champagne County Tina Conseil us and Joan Miller. John Miller chairs the Justice Committee of the league and Tina is currently the president of the league here in Champaign County She is also adjunct professor of law at University of Illinois our third guest is Steve Beckett He is also at the law school here. He's director of a trial advocacy program has been an attorney here in Champaign Urbana for a long

time. And we will at least it to start out here talk a little bit about court watching project that involves both people from the league and students from the University of Illinois has been going on now for a number of years and talk a little bit about what they have found as they have watched trial proceedings here in Champaign County. Questions are certainly welcome as always here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line and that was good anywhere that you can hear us. That is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so at any point here if you'd like to give us a call you're certainly welcome to do that. Thanks very much for being here. Thanks for having me. Maybe we might start as you suggested talk a little bit about the court watching Project now. Certainly there are projects like this various other places around the country. The league here in Champaign County has been doing this now for for quite a few years and then a little bit more recently I guess I use recent in relative terms. You have by students law students have become involved. Let's

start first talking a little bit about what what court watching is. OK court watching is an effort to be involved in the community. What happens at the courthouse usually is unseen by the rest of the community but is felt by crime affects all of us and people coming back from the justice system from the penitentiaries certainly have an impact on our society when when we Court watch we're taking advantage of the fact that in our society the courts are open to the public and so we're availing ourselves of that right to make our courts open. What we look for are fairness. We ask is the justice system truly dispensing justice officials say. Are the cases moving through the system in a timely manner. And is there room for improvement and I think this is where the project that we participated in this year. How does we look at is there room for improvement and there are areas that we found there was room for improvement.

So basically the idea is to have a kind of a regular organized effort for people who are not involved in the cases at all to simply sit in the court room and watch how things go and pay attention to how people conduct themselves how the trial moves. Just as a way of kind of watching keeping an eye on what's going on. And one of the things about the league's project and Joan as chair of our Justice Committee and our champagne county league has we believe the longest consistent court watching project in the state of Illinois going back more than two decades. Our records are a little unclear. But like many volunteer organizations the league is finding that there aren't as many people with as much time as there were before our societal changes that brought more people into the workplace and changed the composition of volunteer organizations so the collaboration with the law school where the law students actually have an educational reason for being there. It is a very positive thing for all of us we find.

So the educational value I recognized right away when I came on greater percentage of the time at the law school in 93 and now full time that I'm trying to teach students trial skills. I'm trying to teach students to be Persuaders I'm trying to teach students to have meaningful relationships with their clients and making sure their clients understand their rights and all that sort of thing. What better way to do it then and as one of the components of the educational process to have them go to the courthouse and actually watch what's happening what's going on to see the good lawyers the not so good lawyers the good judges the other judges. Although I'm not commenting on any specific judges but the idea you understand the idea is that if there's a breakdown in the system I think it's good to have a student see that because I think they learn from that breakdown as well just as they learn when everything flows smoothly. How much time is spent by observers that is the people who are doing it how much time do they spend in the courtroom.

My students have a fall semester requirement of 12 hours court watching each so that if I have 130 students and they each much we must watch 12 hours. That's a lot of hours I think. We we totaled up these numbers and it's like 200 court days. I don't have full time days. You know I do eight hour days. Of watching court that's a lot of court watching. And as that does the individual student they sit in for an entire how and how do they do it is that through all they have day that obviously they have they have classes and so they have to come in in segments. I think one of the things I mean this is historically what Joan and I have been doing for years Joan would come and train my students in the fall she'd tell them what's going on in each courtroom and I would send them off to the courthouse too to watch and they had jury hours that they had to turn in and they had regular hours that they turn and so pretty much they would go around from courtroom to courtroom asking judges and bailiffs. And others. What's going on today to try to find something perhaps that was interesting because let's face it watching all day small claims court could

be like watching paint dry. There are any lawyers in there and so it doesn't really serve my purpose my educational purpose. So I think one of the things that Tina brought to what Joan and I had been doing was a sense of organization and and sending students to the right place at the right time to observe something that that we could then record and get meaningful data out of. Actually Little League has a very small number of court watchers or maybe two of us and we try and spend our time watching jury trials. You can waste a lot of time at the courthouse because trials go away that they plead and then there's not a case so that's why is help so much to have the students and the students saw the same things that I saw. But when one hundred fifty people see the same thing that you see there's more validity for instance I observed that there were very few African-Americans in the jury pool the size a larger number of students saw that and that made it very meaningful to us. I saw a close circuit arraignments where the

defendants were at the court at the jail and their attorneys were in the court room with a judge and often the defendants didn't understand the proceedings and there was nobody there to answer their questions. When 150 students see that and comment on it that is very meaningful. There's two aspects of what the students do I think that's really an asset to this project one is that the students actually feel that in addition to the observation the educational value that they get from it that they're part of some larger process that's making the justice system better they feel that they're actually not only getting their own spending their time there but they feel part of a larger whole and it feels like a positive thing to them which is I think a helpful thing for all of us. And then they fell out of a structured form that all of our court watchers use. So that then this year we had collaboration from Adam Martin sex statistics class and they actually did the statistical analysis for us. And we had worked with some other folks from the university

in looking at the instrument that collects data to make sure that we'd be getting a statistically valid data. So we feel that we have. We have a lot of redundancy in our data because often there's more than one student in the courtroom at the same time or one of our other court watchers is there so we can do internal reliability checks and the conclusions that we're drawing based on observations and the data that we have we feel pretty are pretty firm that we can stand on and we're very pleased that we can make observations that can help make things better. Let me introduce very quickly again the guest we have for this first hour focus 580 and we'll continue to talk. We have in the studio with us Tina can save us. Steve Beckett and Joan Miller. You could say this is President of the League of Women Voters of champagne County she's also adjunct professor of law at the University of Illinois Steve Beckett also teaches you via law school has been an attorney here in Champaign Urbana for many years. He directs the trial advocacy program at the law school. And John Miller chairs the Justice Committee of the League of Women Voters here in Champaign County and we were talking a bit about the court watching project that the league has been involved in a long

time and now with in conjunction with students at the law school questions are welcome here. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well can you give us an overview and I understand this is a and ongoing project on a continuing project because you want to continue to try to learn more and perhaps follow up on some of the initial conclusions that you have. But having said that give us a little overview about what you think is most important that you have learned as a result of having these students and league members sitting in the courtroom and watching trials. Well I think the overall conclusions are that our observers in there sort of organized structured court watching have the sense that once people get to the courthouse once they get on a jury once they get into our court room our proceedings treat people respectfully and with dignity and fairly that we have the things that Joan talked about that are some short comings and structural issues that we

believe could be corrected how the video arraignment system works. Some of the translation issues. But we also saw a significant discrepancy between the demographics of the champagne Urbana area of the county from which the jury pool is drawn and the people who show up at the courthouse. We don't know why that is and we have one of our next phases in addition to continuing the structured court watching is to do it. The league is taking on a study of the jury system in Champaign County we don't know if it's the way we call jurors we don't know if it's. The database from which people are called because we have a population county with very high transient in the population we don't know what this problem is but there is a pretty significant discrepancy when the population of Champaign-Urbana is about 17 percent African-American. The county is about 11 percent African-American and our jury pools are about 6 percent on an observed basis. We see not just that when we see that African-Americans are under

represented in the jury pool and the staff of the courthouse the judges and the attorneys are overwhelmingly Caucasian. I think that this tells us that we need to look further into a way that the jury pool is constituted. And it may well be that it's not just African-Americans who are under represented but that it's low income people. This is something you wouldn't know. I see. And so I welcome this study that one of our members is going to be doing of the jury system because I think it will result in our making reference that recommendations to improve the system and to make it more representative of the total community it seems to me that there is a basic problem that. You find a lot of places around the country that is getting anybody to show up for jury duty. Now I cited this figure and I read it and I'm assuming that that's correct I read it in an article and I think maybe it was actually came from Tina I don't know that that here in Champaign County

actually it came from representatives within the court system. OK so that the writ that the response rate here in Champaign County was about 25. That's that's Trent. And you have to understand the process is that once the group of jurors the unary that is selected by a computer or a random computer program it generates your summons. Well a summon a summons is an order of the court telling that person show up on this date at this time. And what the judges have told us that they've learned over their experience if they need 100 jurors then they need to summons 400 because that's what will happen statistically. I guess part of the issue is well couldn't you do something couldn't you enforce the summons. Anecdotally though Little E. we hear of a story of Judge Baker in federal court when federal jurors did not show up and he sent the marshal out to bring them in the

following Monday to determine why they should be held in contempt of court for ignoring the court order to show up. I'm not sure that systematically that's something that you would want to do because you want the jurors coming into the courthouse to decide these cases in the framework of an open mind. Loving and accepting the system as one of the benchmarks and hallmarks of our society. And if you've been forced to summons in that way I'm not exactly sure that's what you'll end up getting. But obviously systematically there's there's something wrong and there are all kinds of things that could happen depending upon how the summons are responded to. Is it champagne County exceptional in this or do you find this is the same issue of just a percentage of the people who are called actually report for duty. We haven't done a comprehensive study were looking a little bit at what numbers are out there. It appears that the low response rate. At varying levels is something that a lot of court systems are seeing. One of the things that's perplexing to us is that our seems low

perhaps at the low end of the range that people are seeing. And since the pool from which these random computer drawings are made is voter registration you could understand how that might be skewed in one way or another. Driver's licenses identification cards offered by the secretary of state. Those pools don't seem like they ought to be skewed but we need to look in and see. We in our next project one of the things we need to do is look at those lists and see how the demographics of those matched the population. In addition to is there something about in our county because of the high mobility rate maybe the addresses in our database are particularly bad so maybe we're sending out a lot of summons us to people who don't live there anymore who simply don't get them. We just don't know if it's that or if it's something else. We do know that our two week jury terms in this county where you're called for service for a two week period you could hypoth other counties in Illinois use different forms where people have perhaps shorter periods of service or one trial one jury

one trial one trial where if you could imagine and we don't know we'll study it. You can imagine that for the self-employed for the hourly employees people who are not on salary who are not going to get paid anyway that the two week jury term might impose a severe economic hardship and that might. Skewered it we just don't know so those are some of the things we'll be looking at. I served on jury twice and I found it a fascinating experience and that's how I became interested in court watching at the same time it is very restrictive because you don't know you can't make any plans for two weeks. I mean it's a long period of time. Some of those things so that we could look at. I mean we could look at census track data and see whether it's low income people who are middle income people who are not reporting for jury duty something that we have to think about is loss of wages particularly you know if you call for two weeks particularly for low income people people on you know

with minimum wage and also people that are suspicious of the courts that are fearful of the courts may not be reporting So there's a lot that we need to find out. We have a caller here let's bring him into the conversation. Nearby Belgium Bell the community in nearby Danville why number four right here. Well good morning. I haven't been on the other side of this many many many times. Interesting I think if you were on jury duty you now. Thanks for last several of them. I refused to do it which meant that I was usually punished in the back of the court room. I've had the police come out and pick me up once. At that time it was because I didn't get the summons. It was the only male department there. I'm self-employed. It is very very difficult the first couple times I

served I did actually sit through trials and I noticed that there were some serious problems with the things were being done I really had problems with it so I don't. I tell him I cannot be fair and impartial which judges do not like to hear at all they question you they give you a very stern look and using the cue sit in the back of the courtroom to prove it. There is fair and impartial ality in the whole situation. And then there's the the pay situation because when I first started doing it you were on it for a month. And my wife who's a schoolteacher would like to be on it has never served want. We both broke air pre-election and we are both drivers and I don't for the life of us why i always have to show up and she never does. You know actually that's since we've been doing this court watching and we've been writing about this. I would say that's the most frequent response I've gotten from people in social situations and walking around. People say why does somebody I know get called repeatedly

and I've never been called. I mean I'm a good example I'm a registered voter in this community I vote reliably every election I've lived at the same address for 25 years. I haven't been called for jury service since I was in law school. Me either. I mean my. I'm 57 never been cold I've been here forever. Never. You've never been called Never been no one's never not once. You know I served on a jury when I was in law school but I haven't been called since then so you know the fact that it is random and the fact that the pool is very large for the entire county doesn't mean that you're going to see this discrepancy. But when the most frequent responses that we've gotten I think since we've been writing and talking about THIS IS WHY HAVE I NEVER been called or why do I get called all the time and I think it has to do with randomness. But one of the points that I feel the caller is making is that there's something about the way the system has functioned and his participation in the system that makes him feel like he doesn't want to participate. And that's a concern that we have as

well. That's absolutely precise or and let me point out even if the father in this situation and I want to write to the jurist and I don't want that by my intransigence and that in the situation not really wanting then it can be very detrimental to the sides of the case. Because having sat on juries I notice it's very easy to see where your friends if you really want to go and tell a citizen right. And so it's not really fair to either side either prosecution. On the defense to have somebody that's upset with the system. If you see in 110 degree you know and especially when the judge would say well I question that fact you say you cannot be fair and impartial. Well that's one of the first questions you ask in the jury box or can you be fair impartial if you say no they should say Good day sir. But that's not usually what they do. My only experience in court watching has been in Champaign County and I found that the judges have been very respectful of prospective jurors. And when somebody has indicated that they didn't think that they were fair they could be fair.

They've been dismissed from that jury with no recrimination No it was accepted and understood. That's been my experience as well. Problem must be that maybe a difference in the community here because you don't hear from AM County for Marion County is a fairly large county but it's a very small very populated county not the smallest I'm sure but there's only there's only one town in it that's now 30000 which means we're going to have fewer and fewer people to draw from. Yeah. Which And there's that community a rural community is much more unpopular than it used to be. So you know I've maybe that's why they they pushed hard to keep every chair they can get because you say that. 25 percent show up the first way and then one guy says I'm not going to bet because I can't be there. I don't want to wait a minute but first person experience All right well thanks for the comment. Well that again raises this issue of for someone like this somebody who's self-employed he's saying that one of the issues is economic hardship

and that's one of the things that Joan mentioned and Tina mentioned that may indeed be one of these reasons that people are not showing up or people might not be willing to serve others then perhaps making the term of service shorter. Is there anything that you can do about that. And we're not we're not going to position to replace lost income of jurors for the time that they're serving. About the only thing you could do would be to increase the pretty I'm sad but you know in the in point of fact I'm also on the county board and I know that our budget is so tight it would be very very difficult. We have a budget amendment just about every year from circuit court specially in a in a very trial active year because it's hard to anticipate the number of jury trials you're actually going to have during a year. So I think the odds of the jurors being paid $50 a day just is not going to happen. What are they paid now $10.00 day plus mileage.

Did you want anything to that. I mean the we're looking at our leagues project is preparing to look at how are juries called in other counties particularly Illinois because it appears to us that there are some other systems in place that increase the diversity of the jury pool without financial implications or at least huge ones. Do you have some kind of a sense about how many people would not report and not because it would cause financial hardship but because they don't care. They they just don't think it it that it's important. We have no way of measuring that. I mean you literally would have to do some sort of study of the group that didn't show up to assume that that. And I don't know how you do it in focus groups or sending out legions of surveyors with their questionnaires if you could get those people to respond. Do you have some thought about that. Yes I've said in the jury commission and when you're called to serve jury

duty you have if you think that you can't serve or you would not want to serve for any particular reason you have the option of appearing before the jury commission and stating the reason. A lot of teachers were asked not to serve during the school year but serve during the summer. People who are caring for somebody who's there or caring for a young child or people who are self-employed and for legitimate reasons you can be excused and I found those people again like the judge just to be very respectful. And it's often a person's first experience with the court system and it turns out to be a very positive one. So if you don't have to serve if there's a reason why you can't it's entirely possible that another part of the task is to do a better job of education about what the role of jury service is in our democracy about the fact that again anecdotally you talk to people who say oh I was called for jury duty I thought this was going to be horrible you know it was actually a really good experience and I learned a lot from it and I was really pleased that I'd done it which is

another one of the responses that we've gotten pretty frequently as we've been writing and talking about this so it may be that we need to do a better job of talking about this I mean one of the things when we were getting ready to start writing about this is we did a little research and discovered that not only is the jury system fundamental to the American system of democracy it's practically a distinguishing characteristic because we learned that 95 percent of the world's jury trials are held the United States. Yeah it has. There are some people who get an automatic exemption. For example newspaper reporters get an automatic exemption for broadcast reporters do not. I don't know what the difference is. Physicians I believe medical doctors do. I'm not sure who else is there been any discussion at any level of government about whether or not you need to actually have those people just automatically excused. Actually the number of exemptions has been pared down dramatically in recent years. I think lawyers clergymen. I can't remember the laundry

list. Even when I was in law school a few years ago the exemptions were much broader and now there I think they are very narrow very narrow. I think that the newspaper folks. I think competent C people who are deemed not to be competent I don't remember the other categories but still the news the print reporters I didn't mean to get to it was absolute and out of order by the end and it competently no in the same sense. We have several callers here let's get back to the people who are listening. Next up someone in Urbana line one. Well yeah. You know with all the shenanigans going on with voter rolls and Florida what not a conspiracy theorist might might wonder you know if there's some sort of. You know sifting of these of these juries by political inclinations.

Well I don't we certainly don't have that I think part of it could be a lack of knowledge a lack of educational understanding. You know in El annoy if for instance if you've been convicted of a felony felony you can still register to vote. You can still serve on a jury. Now it may be a person who has that in their background feels that they don't trust the court system or that they might not be selected and so they wouldn't come forward when they got their summons but they are not they are not disenfranchised and they're not excused for cause from from a jury system because they have a prior conviction. I don't know I don't know if that's a reason why someone would stay away. What's what's due to the lack of knowledge. Well that that people out in that community think that if if for instance they might think that because I have a conviction or they might think because someone in my family has had a conviction that I shouldn't come forward because the first thing the judge is going to do is ask me as anybody in your family ever been convicted of a crime. I'm going to have to say yes. Therefore I'm

automatically not going to be selected for a jury. And that's not true. If the the the selection process definitely should not be completely random there should be all on just one second. There's to be some process where anyone who's served in a jury recently should be given a lower probability of being selected and anyone who has not been has not served in a long time should have a higher probability. Even if you make a partially random. So I waited randomness it absolutely positively there's to be some kind of waiting where you know you know there's a there's a greater chance of everybody serving at some time or another and you know not only would that be more fair and evenly distributed among the population it would it would just bring people together in the community more because instead of you know one person being jealous of another person because they got to serve on jury duty and the other person being jealous of the other person because they didn't have to serve you know every couple of

months instead of both people feeling bad and alienated from each other both people would feel good. Good that they got to participate but not too much and then they could swap you know war stories over over the WaterCooler. Yeah well that certainly would get at the issue raised by the very first caller where he said he's been called repeatedly that his wife hasn't been called at all and I think Tina said yes and in fact when you talk to people that's the kind of thing that you hear all the time. You have people say I've been called a whole bunch of times. And my next door neighbor hasn't been called also. You know is there in some some way to deal with him. I was in court one time when the judge asked the jurors have any of you been called. Once again within a period of six months. And there was one woman and this was her second time within five months of being called for jury duty and he offered to excuse her but she wanted to serve. Well I think it's one of the things as our project goes forward to study how the system operates I think it's one of the solutions or one of the recommendations that need to be examined in terms of how other

jurisdictions tried this how is it worked. How hard is it to implement and I think there are a lot of questions and we don't have good answers for them yet but we have the first step which is the observations in the structured court watching going on that is allowing us to collect some organized and statistically meaningful data and then we'll build on the next step by studying it some more. OK well let's talk with someone else. The next caller will be in Champaign this is lie number two. Hello. Yes I have. I've been in the community 55 years and I've only served once but it wasn't a very happy situation for me I was very upset. We were trying to case and I was surprised that they allowed and ex-sheriff on the on the jury that anyhow after we heard everything we went into the jury room he just sort of took over said he'd been on the walk of juries and he could help us. And the first thing he did was

gather all the man man only in the corner and the only thing I heard was we want to support our police which means he'd already made the decision for us. And they whispered around for a while. Then he came back he took charge and he said Now we'll vote for who will be foreman. And we were supposed to put our own name on a piece of paper and pass it in. And lo and behold he became the foreman. And then he saw a few of us. There were three women being a little surprised. And so he said All right we'll do it again and we each had to put our name on a piece of paper. And he was the doorman the foreman again. I had wondered but I was inexperienced in all this and that if he had asked all the men to put his name on it then the voting it was pretty much the man against three women.

And then the case lasted the second day and we were told not to discuss it with anybody. And the first thing that happened when we got back is one of the women women said she talked it over with her husband and he said that. She would say vote guilty. And that surprised me because I didn't know that husbands who were even there were you know part of the jury. If it is there. Thing that could have cause to be a mistrial what should I have done I would be very upset. I suppose the reporting to the presiding judge about the juror who talked about the case with her husband could be considered juror misconduct. The dynamic of the jury once it begins to deliberate however is pretty much left up to his own so you could have someone with an extremely strong personality who could literally take over a jury in the in that dynamic I mean I guess my reaction is I wish my law students could hear this

story. Those those who are wanting to practice criminal defense might say Well be careful about leaving someone on the jury because they have a certain number of peremptory challenges. Who is in law enforcement and the prosecutors would go yes we should leave people who formerly been in law enforcement. Yes it is it alright to be in the jury room and have a little group chatting among themselves to the exclusion of others. I know all the deliberations should include all the jurors and jurors are warned by the judge routinely not to discuss the case with anybody including other jurors until you go into the jury room to deliberate and have made it a mini trial. Well I think if you had a concern if this happened to you again you could you could tell the bailiff about your concern and he would relay that to the judge. I had a very similar experience on one of the juries that I served and milder level than yours and

I think sometimes it is it's very emotional because we all bring into it our own personalities and our biases and I'm not you know not every jury experience is a happy one. There are some that are very positive others that aren't. Well you've been on the elevator one of the people that he wanted to know who who the juror was who had originally hung up because I was just angry and I think the only thing I had in my possession was to hang the jury and the judge refused it and made us keep on deliberating until we came to a verdict and I found again again that it was very upsetting to me. Well I appreciate you calling in and giving us the story. And just again Steve it sounded like it sounds as if the the what happens in the jury room once the jury goes they receive the case. No one you know that rolls them. Well that dynamic within the room is the way that group functions. And I suppose there's a psychology a group of small

group functioning that you could do there. But of course there are left there that they can't if they're excused for the evening and go home which is the way it seems to be the way to do it. We don't have sequestered jurors for juries at least in Champaign County anymore. The judge at Mount admonishes just as Joan said you're not supposed to talk about this case with anyone you're not supposed to go home and talk to your husband or significant other or you know any anybody else about the case it's supposed to be those 12 people who are reviewing the evidence and deciding the case and that would be considered your juror misconduct. Let's continue we have about 10 minutes left 15 minutes left maybe I should also introduce Again our guest Steve Beckett teaches at University of Illinois Law School he directs the travel advocacy program also has practiced law in Champaign-Urbana for many years. Joan Miller chairs the Justice Committee of the champagne county league women voters. And Tina Conseil us is president of the champagne county league. She is also adjunct professor of law at University of Illinois we've been talking a bit about the champagne county court watching Project which has been going on for a long time that involves the

league and also law students from the year of high Questions Comments welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 will go back over to Danville for another listener here right here in line number four. Hello. Yeah. Thank you. Excellent excellent discussion this morning. Something that I think that needs to be talked about at this point because throughout the entire conversation there's been a number of issues that I think can be addressed by this. One thing you are right. You know we talked about the helplessness and you're not feeling like they have any power. Jurors juries are being hijacked by individuals. We're talking about the education of the students. But in none of the discussion have we been talking about the education of the public and the education of the public to address a lot of these issues would be to educate them about juror right. All of them known as jury nullification. Jury nullification empowers an individual to have actually more powers than Congress or the president

because they can nullify any law. Well actually that would be unlawful and when you when you become a juror you take an oath and the oath is to uphold the laws and constitution of the United States. I'm not saying the jury nullification doesn't occur. But as a matter of fact jurors don't have the right to nullify the law under way that's you under any statute. That's why they should. That's why there's a juror oath that you will uphold the laws of the state of Illinois in the Constitution of the state of Illinois in the Constitution of the United States. You know you can't have jurors who say well I don't care that the prosecution has proved the elements of homicide of murder. I like this guy I'm going to let him go. You just you can't do that or this was a horrible investigation it was brought with evil purpose by the complaining witness and even though the state has proved its case. We're going to let him go. You know that just doesn't that doesn't make any sense.

But you haven't answered my question and I think I have answered your question. Under what Batu Under what law does not apply to your the right to uphold their station. OK. Is that on the jurors right. Able to tell you didn't listen to me. The statute is the statute that sets forth how jurors are selected jurors duties and the jurors oath you can't have an oath you know you don't take an oath the SAYS. Sometimes I'm going to follow the law. Sometimes I'm going to follow the Constitution the oath says you're going to follow the law. We as yours have no rights once we're on that jury. You have a right you have a right to determine the facts you have a right to exercise your own judgment. You have a right to have to follow the rules of law that apply to trials and you don't have to agree with the government's witnesses for instance in a criminal case. You don't have to agree with the defense as witnesses you have a right to believe what you feel the evidence has produced. But you don't have a right you know we don't live in an anarchic anarchistic society. This isn't you know some hectic chaos where we just

pick 12 people off the street and they get to do whatever they want. That's the whole point of having a jury. Didn't jurors originally have this right now. They've never had that right. They've never had this right have not they have not. You hear about jurors juries who have done it runaway juries who do it who do it who don't know a five for whatever reason that was one of the problems in the south because if African-American defendants would be absolutely not guilty they'd be convicted anyway because jurors were notified. Well white defendants who had committed crimes on African-American victims would be found not guilty. You know there's a case going on down in Mississippi right now where there's a jury that said deadlocked where an 80 some year old guy is accused of killing the civil rights workers back in the 60s. Who knows what's going on with that jury. So am I naive enough to say that there isn't nullification. No I'm not but to say that it's a juror right. That's us Ron. Well that is one of the audio. Exemptions is it not from being dismissed as a juror is likely to tell the judge that you believe and if you're in the process of

being interviewed for it you're a chef. That's correct if you tell the judge you're not going to follow the law. You believe in the constitutional right. If you find a law that is immoral or improper that you have the right of the citizen under the Constitution and states that all high and the judge is going to ask you Are you going to follow the law. If you give any indication that you will not you'll be excused. Thank you that's what I was going to no longer go on the next caller here is in Champaign this is lie number three. Hello. Oh yes I like to follow up in part on the last caller and in part on the caller before that and. I'm curious about the rights and responsibilities of the jury and of a person who serves on the jury and particularly whether you or any of your guests there have a recommendation of a book or a guide for proper acting on a jury.

Other words what can jurors do. You just give us some information about this or busting some myths about jury nullification. What about asking questions of the judge or requesting action by the court or. You know like the caller to two calls ago if you see what you think is mixed misconduct within the jury how do you respond and I think a lot of questions. Is there any good guide to how to be on a jury out there. I think there's not a good guide but you point up as did the previous caller the need for education. Most of us when we get a summons to report for jury duty who first say what am I going to do. A lot of people are scared. I mean I see people go the jury commission they're very nervous and really are actually shaking. And there really isn't a reason to worry but you don't know that until you get there. I think as far as what you do when you're on a jury if there's if you see any irregularity

you are supposed to notify the judge could send the judge a note or you can notify his bailiff and he will give the information to the judge. But as far as your conduct in the as a member of the jury you take an oath to follow the judge's instructions and he will instruct you on what to do when you can talk about the case where what you do if there appears to be some irregularity. So in general we need to inform people about what what to do if you're called for jury duty. Generally what you can expect when you're on a jury but more specific instructions always come from the judge. You raise an interesting point the American Bar Association is running an initiative now on the American jury and they have a number of educational materials they've developed and maybe one of the things our jury project needs to do is look at those and see if some of those would be helpful resources so that's an interesting idea and we can add that to our list thank you. Thank you.

Let's go to another caller this is also a champagne line one. Hello. Yes I'm calling and I guess my concern is. Have I heard that 25 percent of only 25 percent of people was going for jury duty in Champaign County actually to show up. Now have there been studies the testicle study to explain why the 80 is a Laureus is just. The reason for the is a simply gut reaction. What is the deal there. Well that we don't know the answer to that. That's one of the things that the League of Women Voters champagne County jury project will be undertaking in our next phase. If you're going to continue our court watching so we continue to have the information about how the system is functioning but we're going to start studying the questions that some of these observations have raised and one of them is what's going on with our jury response rate we don't know and we have a number of questions and we're going to try to figure out the answers.

OK well that's going to segue me into a question specifically for Professor Beckett. He in a very conspicuous way or. Surmise that African-Americans for example were somewhat somewhat culprits and lacked in life a lacking a racially diverse jury jury pool because one they want to Tennessee to shirk their civic responsibility. No didn't say that at all. I read the article. I know that but I didn't say that I was there I know what I said. Well you know I don't know what was printed and to that they have a misconception about what goes on at the Champlain County Courthouse. So I've found that to be interesting because it also seemed to indicate he was shooting from the hip. Well both Steve and I talked to the real owner and then with attorneys and professors this shoot from the hip on something as important as race. Sir may I give you a piece of information that might be of assistance. Yes you may. When that story was written by the reporter there was. She

had limited space and I believe that what happened is that there had been a conversation about the low response rate to jury summons in general. And then there was some other conversation and I think they got sort of smashed together in the writing of the article and both under deadline and space constraints. I think in retrospect all of us would have hoped that article might have had a little more space in order to put a fuller context that's one of the reasons we put together our guest commentary to try to put all the facts out together. None of us actually control what newspaper reporters reporters write I think that she was working hard to do a conscientious job and I think she had space and time constraints and so I think it left with some people an impression that was inaccurate about both what the study said and both of the issues that we're looking at studying and I think all of us feel bad about that because the goal is to improve the situation. Well that may be true but I'm telling you it did cause offense and a large portion of the African-American community and other then having told you and everybody else who's ever

asked me Can you tell me how I could possibly have corrected the misimpression that there was a dog or a collar up article where there are and that's why we wrote the follow up article that was in the Sunday paper and tried to point out specifically that we were talking about all people not some specific segment of the community damage had been done. Professor Vic OK and like somehow that was my fault that the damage was done. It sounds like you have a like a preconceived notion and no matter what the facts are you just you're going to hold your opinion and you're entitled to that and the dynamics of race in this county and this country. And I understand the dynamics of race in the so-called equity of a jury system. And when I ever I see race being played fast and loose because of me the jury system. Yes I do have some concern. We have some concerns too about the discrepancy between the demographics of the county and the juries that we observe at the courthouse and that's one of the major findings of the study that we were trying to bring to light.

So I guess the the fact that you know if you were if you had Well if you were well-intentioned I have no reason to deny that if it indeed backfired and I saw nothing quite frankly as of this moment they corrected the damage that was done. But well let me again raise this issue that one of the articles you're talking about was written by a newspaper reporter that we didn't control and then the second article that we actually wrote that represented our findings. We tried to correct it. They gave us a fair amount of space and we tried to correct it by putting all the facts out there and the goal is to improve the situation. And we found a significant problem. We don't understand the cause we hope to study it and we'd like everyone who's interested and concerned about this to join in with us. And people want to comment they want to contact you. Are What do they do. We put our e-mail addresses in the newspaper commentary we wrote. John Miller the League of Women Voters has a web page that people can submit things to us. You can send us e-mail you can write us letters you can

call us and we'd be delighted to have people participate in both. Continuing our court watching in extending our court watching project with additional people where looking for people and groups who would like to participate and people who are interested in participating in the jury study to make recommendations for improving the situation. OK. We're just on the point we're going to have to stop. And I know this is something that you're going to continue to look at and maybe another day we'll have an opportunity to talk some more. And any last sort of thought that you would like to leave with. The whole point of the study is to for improvement. It's difficult to raise issues that contain criticism and have them accepted in a constructive way. Nobody's pointing any figures. Nobody's blaming anyone about anything. We just want the system to work we want to work better. Don't. Well our full report is available online at the College of Law website you can go and download the analysis and we will also get permission from a seek

permission from the news guys that put our guest commentary that ran on the twenty ninth of May. It's our full report of our project will seek permission from them to be able to post that as well so people who'd like to get the facts as we collected them can get them at the College of Law or the League of Women Voters website. And we welcome anybody in the community who wants to work with us to make this is the matter. All right our three guests Joan Miller you just heard from her she chairs the Justice Committee of the champagne County League of Women Voters. Tina Conseil is president of the champagne county league also adjunct professor of law at the U of I. Steve Baca directs the trial advocacy program at the Obeid law school and has been an attorney here in practice for a long time in Champaign Urbana Thank you all very much. Thank you for having me.