Federal Judge Defends New Jury Method : Trials: He says the selection process for panels in Santa Ana is legal and does not exclude minorities. A group of defense attorneys has challenged the procedures in court.

A U.S. District judge who oversaw implementation of a new jury selection method for the federal courthouse in Santa Ana defended the procedures Wednesday, saying they were legal and would not exclude minorities from jury service as some defense attorneys contend.

“I think we are on very solid ground. We have legal opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court and our court counsel, and the demographics are correct,” said District Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian, who chairs the jury committee at the main federal courthouse in Los Angeles. Last week, the new method of selecting prospective jurors was challenged in court by a group of Orange County defense attorneys, including the head of the federal public defender’s office in Santa Ana. They alleged that defendants who are minorities might be denied their constitutional right to be judged by a jury of their peers.

As a result, a mistrial was declared in one bank robbery case involving a black defendant after the jury pool produced under the new process turned out to be almost exclusively white.

A second trial for three Latinos charged with cocaine possession was postponed, and defense attorneys say other trials could be delayed until it can be assured the jury pools represent a cross-section of the community.

A hearing on the issue is scheduled before District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler at the Santa Ana courthouse on Nov. 15. Federal Public Defender H. Dean Steward is preparing a brief on the matter, and William Kopeny, a member of the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is also gathering data for the hearing, including information about jury selection methods of other federal courts.

For trials in Santa Ana, jurors used to be selected from the seven counties within the federal court system’s central district of California. They are San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange.

Because Santa Ana was a branch court at the time, it was legally required to draw jurors from all counties within the district, despite the expense to the court and inconvenience to citizens who lived in the faraway counties.

In January, Congress created three court divisions within the central district--Santa Ana, Los Angeles and Riverside. To reduce costs and the hardship for citizens, the court implemented a new policy in October to draw potential jurors for Santa Ana from Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Tevrizian said his committee and the U.S. Department of Justice went to considerable effort to ensure the new procedures were legal and capable of delivering a cross-section of the community for jury service.

Once the Santa Ana court became a division, the judge said, it became possible for Santa Ana to draw jurors from a smaller geographical area--a change that was supported even by the judges who decided to delay the Santa Ana trials in question.

According to case law and legal opinions from the administrative office of the U.S. Courts in Washington, there is no constitutional right to a jury drawn from an entire judicial district if the court is deemed a division.

Tevrizian said the racial makeup for Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties is similar to the four other counties of the central district, and should not result in a disproportionate number of whites in the jury pool.

The 1990 census shows that Orange County is 64% white, 23% Latino, 10% Asian, 1.6% black and has less than 1% people of other races. Riverside County is 65% white, 26% Latino, 5% black, 3% Asian and has less than 1% people of other races. San Bernardino County is 61% white, 27% Latino, 8% black, 4% Asian and has less than 1% people of other races.

“The challenges to the new method are to be expected from defense attorneys. This is nothing new,” Tevrizian said. “They are trying to establish a record for potential appellate issues.”

Lawyers attacking the change, he said, have no data to back up their contentions that juries will end up with a preponderance of whites as a result of the new procedure.

But Steward said his initial research indicates the new policy has reduced by almost 1 million the number of blacks that can be considered for jury service at the Santa Ana courthouse.

“There are definitely demographic differences, making it harder to get blacks onto a jury,” Steward said, adding that more defense attorneys might join the challenge in the days ahead.

While Tevrizian believes the new selection process is sound, he said the court is always concerned about the racial makeup of federal juries. His committee is now considering using California driver’s license information to expand the numbers of people that can be called for jury duty.

Federal court now relies on voter registration rolls to select citizens for service. But statistics indicate that in Los Angeles County, Latinos and Asians are under-represented as a portion of the population based on voter registration figures.