ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : In Grand Juries, Diversity Is No Frill

The Orange County Grand Jury’s recommendation that the federal government declare a three-year moratorium on immigration set off a firestorm of criticism, which was deserved.

And that focused attention on the grand jury itself and pointed up an obvious problem: For all their good work in critiquing government agencies, county grand juries have not been very diverse in their composition. It would be good to see them bring the same energy to solving that problem as they display on topics like health care and special districts.

The jury, which had done good work before the immigration report, made suggestions that were flawed and unrealistic. In fact, one has to wonder what they were doing taking on this issue in the first place. There was no expert testimony, only a rough county estimate on the cost of illegal immigration. No wonder Latino and Asian-American groups rightly criticized it for not taking into account immigrants’ contributions to the economy.

MINORITY OUTCRY: Now officials of groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc. hope to use the report to get more minority representation on future grand juries. That’s a goal worth striving to achieve. But it will be difficult to accomplish.

Grand jurors are volunteers who spend four or often five days a week on panel work, for $25 a day plus mileage. Given the workload, members are usually retirees, making for a lack of diversity by age as well as ethnic background. The average age of the grand jurors is over 60. The previous grand jury had 17 Anglos and two Latinos.

The current panel has 15 Anglos, two Latinos, one African-American and one American Indian. Those proportions are far out of balance with the county’s ethnic makeup. Grand juries with members of all ages and ethnic backgrounds would better serve the community.

The issue has increased in importance with the 1990 passage of Proposition 115, the so-called victims’ bill of rights. Before the proposition, grand juries concentrated almost exclusively on their civil role as government watchdogs. Prosecutors in the state seldom used the panels in criminal cases because a preliminary hearing was required, whether a defendant was charged by a prosecutor or indicted by a grand jury. An indictment therefore duplicated the prosecutor’s work. But Prop. 115 specified that a defendant indicted by a grand jury had no right to a preliminary hearing but instead would be referred directly to Superior Court. Since then, there has been an increase in Orange County in the number of grand jury indictments.

RUBBER-STAMP IMAGE: Although grand juries have the reputation of rubber-stamping prosecutors’ work in criminal cases, the panel does have the power to say “no.” In such cases, and in civil matters, it is important to have minorities in the room to bring their experiences to bear, to ask questions others might not and to look at matters from a different point of view.

County officials charged with recruiting grand jurors are aware of the need for diversity and are correctly seeking panel members from minority communities. Nearly 7,000 mailers go out every year to a variety of community and minority groups, seeking grand jurors.

In the wake of the latest controversy, the Superior Court judge who oversees the grand jury has offered to meet with Latinos and Asian-Americans on the issue, which is good. The judge, Michael Brenner, is also right in noting the difficulty of getting anyone, regardless of race, to give up a year’s time to be a grand juror. Officials of Latino and Asian-American groups would be wise to join the effort and actively solicit minority representatives for these panels.