Judges Tackle Problem of Vista Court Juries : Issue of Racial Composition May Require That Panels Be Drawn From All of S.D. County

What price justice?

More specifically, how do the courts weigh the inconvenience of a juror driving long distances to a courthouse against the right of a criminal defendant to be tried by a jury of his peers?

That’s the gist of the debate to be argued in private today by Superior Court judges in San Diego. They are prompted by a state Court of Appeals ruling last month that Vista Superior Court juries are technically flawed because they do not accurately reflect the racial composition of San Diego County as a whole.

Countywide, blacks make up 4.5% of the population; in North County, it’s 1.5%. The appellate judges’ ruling came at the request of two attorneys representing black criminal defendants in unrelated Vista cases who say the trials should be held in San Diego rather than Vista because of the likelihood there would be more blacks on a jury in San Diego.

Jurors summoned to serve in Vista are residents of North County, where blacks make up only 1.5% of the population. Countywide, however, blacks make up 4.5% of the population.

Since the Vista courts are only a branch operation of San Diego Superior Court, which serves the entire county, the attorneys argued that Vista juries should reflect the racial makeup of the entire county. The appellate court agreed.

The eight-judge executive committee of the San Diego Superior Court said last week that the flaw could be remedied simply by summoning jurors from all over San Diego County to serve in Vista.

And that would seem to put the issue to rest, were it not for two side issues:

- Currently, a person summoned to jury duty may be excused if he has to drive more than 25 miles to get to court. So even if the entire county were to become the jury pool for Vista courts, persons living more than 25 miles from the Vista courthouse in North County would still have the option of declining jury duty. Practically, then, what is gained by a countywide jury pool?

- County officials are worried about the cost of expanding the size of Vista’s jury pool. Not only would the county pay more in mileage reimbursements to get jurors to Vista (at 15 cents per mile one way), but the paper work and administrative headaches in summoning jurors from throughout the county--and then excusing those who lived more than 25 miles away and don’t want to serve--would aggravate the courts budget.

“We get all kinds of problems. Some are enjoyable, some aren’t. I think this is one of the interesting ones,” said Superior Court Judge Jack Levitt, who chairs the judges’ jury committee.

Levitt asked the executive committee not to implement its decision until his committee can consider the dilemma. His group will meet at 4:15 p.m. today to discuss the issue, but no public announcement of their recommendation is expected before Tuesday.

Jurors are selected from lists provided by the registrar of voters and the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Vista Superior Courts further filter potential jurors by summoning only those who live in the Fifth Supervisorial District, the boundaries of which are not exactly the same but closely resemble those of the area served by the Vista courts. That system of jury selection has been the case in Vista since the branch court was established in 1970, and for the most part it has been trouble-free.

Trial Sometimes Moved Occasionally, a criminal defense attorney has argued that the North County jury pool does not reflect the racial makeup of the entire county, and in most of those instances the judges have allowed the trial to be moved to San Diego.

In 1980, however, a judge refused such a request. The defense attorney successfully appealed the judge’s refusal, and the criminal case was transferred to San Diego. But since the appellate court’s ruling was not formally published, it could not be cited as precedent in later cases.

A person called to jury duty may be excused if he has to drive more than 25 miles. Then, late last year, the issue of the jury again surfaced when a different judge refused to transfer a trial to San Diego. The judge argued that the Fifth District was, in the legal sense of the word, the “community” served by the Vista courts and indeed the racial composition of the Vista juries accurately reflected the racial makeup of the Fifth District.

The appellate judges disagreed in a finding issued Dec. 21, saying that the “community,” for purposes of the jury pool, is the entire county. And unlike the 1980 ruling, this one was formally published as a higher court opinion, thereby prompting the Superior Court judges to resolve the conflict once and for all.

Bill Pierce, administrator of San Diego Superior Court and himself a former jury commissioner, said his office has not yet calculated the additional cost of summoning jurors from throughout the entire county to serve in Vista.

(The county budget sets aside $900,000 a year to pay jurors $5 a day and 15 cents a mile, one way. Jurors receive $10 a day to serve. The state pays the county the other $5.

(During 1984, 5,782 jurors served in Vista and 12,751 served in San Diego, records reflect.)

Costs and Effect “The additional cost will be in mileage reimbursement and in the numbers of jurors who will have to be summoned for North County. And since there will be some drop-off because of those who will be excused because of the distance, we will have to summon even more, which means more paper work, more telephone calls, more correspondence into the jury commissioner’s office. That can add up over time,” Pierce said.

There are other options in resolving the jury problem, Pierce and others note:

- Give defendants the option of having their cases transferred to San Diego. The district attorney’s office says it is opposed to that because of logistics and the inconvenience of asking North County witnesses to drive to San Diego. The district attorney’s office also argues that crimes should be tried in the communities where they occur. Furthermore, officials note, transferring cases to San Diego would simply add to the backlog of cases already in San Diego.

- Ask defendants to waive their right to a jury that represents the entire county population. Defense attorneys, however, could be expected to be reluctant to waive that right for fear of being sued for malpractice should clients be convicted.

- Increase somewhat the geographic size of the North County jury pool to make it contiguous with the area the courts now serve, rather than the smaller Fifth Supervisorial District from which jurors are now selected. But it is unlikely that the appellate judges would consider the larger jury pool area to be representative of the entire county, some officials say.

“This is definitely a challenge, because we’re looking at providing the best jury panel for the defendants while also trying to keep the cost to the county as low as possible,” Pierce said.

Fairness vs. Economy “We’re trying to balance fairness with economy. Fairness will have the priority, but cost is still something we have to consider.”

The decision will be watched by county officials since the courts system is gearing up to introduce two new Superior Courts in El Cajon and one new Superior Court in Chula Vista. “When those courts open up, we will have to discuss the same issues we’re talking about in the case of Vista,” Pierce said.

Jurors serving the downtown San Diego Superior Courts are selected from throughout the entire county, including such distant points as Fallbrook, Borrego Springs and Jamul, Pierce noted. “And while many persons ask to be excused because of the distance, we still get some jurors who want to serve on a jury and are willing to make the drive.”

In Los Angeles County, the Superior Court is divided into 11 separate districts for administrative purposes. Still, jurors are selected countywide and may well be asked to appear for jury duty 75 miles or more from where they live.

In the Los Angeles system, however, jurors can claim a hardship if they are asked to report to a courthouse more than 20 miles from where they live, in which case they are assigned to a court within 20 miles of their home.

Ray Arce, director of juror services for Los Angeles Superior Court, said a black criminal defendant facing trial in Long Beach challenged the jury pool because it was countywide, and he wanted the jurors selected specifically from the relatively small area served by the Long Beach court, which has a greater percentage of blacks. The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the countywide jury pool.

In Orange County, there are two branches of the Superior Court--one in Fullerton, another in Westminster--to supplement the main courthouse in Santa Ana. The juries for each of the two branch courts are selected from those parts of the county specifically served by those branch courts in much the same way as Vista has been selecting its jurors until now.

The Orange County jury selection system, however, has not been challenged in the way Vista’s has because the blacks who live in Orange County (about 1.2% of the county’s total population) are distributed evenly throughout the county, said Alan Slater, the executive officer and jury commissioner of the Orange County Superior Court.

In Riverside County, a branch Superior Court is located in Indio, 74 miles east of the main county courthouse in Riverside. Jurors are selected countywide and then assigned to either the Riverside or Indio courts based on the ZIP code of where they live, said Clara Boss, administrative services officer for the court.

The Riverside system was once challenged, she said, on grounds that the Indio jury pool did not accurately reflect the racial makeup of the entire county. But census figures showed that Indio’s juries did accurately reflect the entire county’s ethnic composition, and the appeal was denied.