Judge Reinstates Plan for Increasing Minority Mix in Torrance Jury Pool

A Torrance judge has reinstated an order aimed at ensuring that jury pools reflect the racial diversity of a community.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Cecil J. Mills said he reinstated the order--which requires that jurors for the Torrance courthouse be summoned from a 20-mile radius--after conducting his own, albeit unscientific, survey.

“I didn’t have any hard and fast studies to justify my putting the order back into effect,” Mills said. “I just got a feeling I didn’t like what I saw” with regard to the ethnic makeup of jury pools in Torrance.

The county tries to assign jurors to the courthouse closest to their homes. County surveys indicate that the average distance a juror travels from his home to court is 10 miles.

Ruling Under Appeal

But early this year, the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles ordered the county to use the 20-mile radius to ensure ethnic diversity in jury pools. The county appealed that ruling to the state Supreme Court, and it is not a legally binding precedent pending the high court’s decision.

Last March, Mills signed an order to force the county to follow the appellate court ruling in summoning jurors for Torrance. The order came after two mistrials were declared during jury selection in Torrance as a result of the appellate court ruling.

However, he withdrew the order in August after county court officials contacted him and other Superior Court presiding judges and requested that they not implement the 20-mile rule until the Supreme Court rules.

Mills said he decided to reinstate his order Nov. 12 after observing the ethnic makeup of jury pools in Torrance and talking to his fellow judges. He said the order also should decrease the chances of cases being appealed should the Supreme Court uphold the appellate court’s ruling.

January Hearing Set

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case this January and probably will decide it by next summer.

“Hopefully, the Supreme Court will give us some guidelines,” Mills said. “Until then, I feel comfortable with what we are doing.”

Santa Monica, which initially was bound by the appellate court ruling, is not complying with the 20-mile rule until the issue is resolved. However, in Long Beach presiding Superior Court Judge Sheila Pokras has ordered the county to conform to the appellate court ruling in summoning jurors to that court.

“Mainly, juries in Long Beach seem to end up from the Palos Verdes area,” Pokras said. “They all seem to say that they’re all engineers from Palos Verdes. And as a lawyer that does bother me. I certainly want to see fairer representations of women and minorities and of (the defendants’) peers.”

Murder Trial Ruling

The appellate court ruling stemmed from the pending trial in Santa Monica Superior Court of Edward C. Williams, a black man charged with the 1980 murder of a Westside businessman. During jury selection, Williams’ attorney asserted that there were too few blacks in the jury pool for Williams to receive a fair trial. The attorney requested that the case be transferred to another court where more blacks were available. The request was denied.

The appellate court also denied the request, but ruled that jurors should be selected from a 20-mile radius around a courthouse to ensure that a proper cross section of the community is represented on jury pools. Under state law, there is a 20-mile limit on the distance a juror in Los Angeles County is required to travel from his home to the court.

The court’s ruling was immediately criticized by county officials, who contend that it places an unfair burden on potential jurors who live within 20 miles of a number of courthouses. For example, a person residing in Torrance could be summoned to appear for jury duty at more than a dozen county courthouses as far away as downtown Los Angeles.

Additionally, court officials say some jurors who live in such areas could be forced to serve as jurors more often than others. “I welcome the appellate court decision . . . because there is an effort to define ‘community,’ ” said Frank S. Zolin, executive officer of the Superior Court. “The only administrative problem we see with (the ruling) is that when they established the 20-mile circle, they did not take into consideration that those circles would overlap.”

Could Penalize the Poor

Zolin also said that if the ruling stands, poor people who rely on public transportation to get to and from courthouses could be penalized. “People who normally go downtown will have to go to Santa Monica and they’ll say that’s a hardship. And we’ll say, ‘Tough, you’re going to have to report to Santa Monica.’ ”

County officials say they do not systematically compile statistics on the number of minorities represented on jury pools at the county’s more than 30 municipal and superior courts.

However, for the months May through August, when jurors were selected from a 20-mile radius to serve in Torrance, the average percentage of blacks serving on jury pools was 10.7%, according to information gleaned from questionnaires filled out by jurors. In October, when the county’s practice of assigning jurors to the closest courthouse was used, the percentage was 8.5%.

In Santa Monica, county statistics show that the percentage of blacks serving as jurors from July through December of last year averaged 4.8%. In May and June of this year, when the appellate court ruling was in effect, the percentage was 7.2% and 12.1%, respectively.

And in Long Beach, the percentage of blacks reporting for jury duty increased from 7.1% to 9.5% from July through October.

Times staff writer Daryl Kelley contributed to this story.