Alameda County Public Defender: Oppose The Court’s Plan to Make Jury Service More Difficult and Juries Less Diverse

The Alameda County Public Defender is opposed to a proposed new rule that would change the way jurors are selected for misdemeanor cases in Alameda County.  I join in their opposition, and we need your help.  Please contact the courts and let them know you are opposed to.

According to the Public Defender’s website:

“The Alameda County Superior Court has posted a new proposed rule that would change the way jurors are selected for misdemeanor cases. You can read it here.

Currently, the rule provides that Alameda County civil and misdemeanor juries are drawn from four locations with potential jurors called to serve in the courthouse that is closest to them geographically. The new rule eliminates these subpanels, and would create county-wide juries for misdemeanor cases, similar to felony jury trials.

All potential jurors would be drawn from one list without respect to the distance between the courthouse and the juror’s residence. This means that a citizen from the outskirts of Fremont or Pleasanton could be called to serve on a misdemeanor petty theft jury trial in Oakland and vice versa.

This will create a heavy burden on the residents of Alameda County that already find it difficult to serve on juries, and it will exacerbate the poor representation of low income people of color on juries. In short, it will be terrible for our clients, our practice and all the residents of Alameda County.

The courts are accepting public comment on the proposed change until May 3, 2018, with the proposed change taking effect July 1..

Please take the time to send an email to the Court using the form on the Public Defender’s website, here. It will take less than a minute and may help prevent this terrible rule from taking effect.

Additional written comments can be submitted to any of the following:

• pcomments@alameda.courts.ca.gov
• Superior Court of California, County of Alameda, Attn: Jasmine Polar, 1225 Fallon Street, Room 209, Oakland, CA 94612
• Fax: (510) 891-6276″

Please make your voice heard.  People don’t like jury duty to start with, and traveling to Fremont from Oakland or vice versa to hear a petty theft case will not make them any more enthusiastic about it; quite the opposite.

I suspect the court is doing this to try and make the laws within the county enforced more uniformly.  Fremont tends to be more conservative and hand out harsher penalties than Oakland does.  I think the remedy there is with the judges and district attorneys, not with juries.  Make the offers to settle cases uniform across the county.

Anyhow, Alameda County is huge, the commutes are dreadful now, and asking people from Oakland to commute 2-3 hours a day to serve on a jury in Fremont is just another reason for people to consider leaving the Bay Area.