Courthouse Makes Blanket Use of Juror Anonymity : Justice: Move by Bellflower judge apparently is a first in U.S. He hopes to reduce fear, but some criticize action.

In the five municipal courtrooms in Bellflower, there is no crush of news media covering high profile cases. There are no mobsters, drug lords or murderers on trial. Here, all the cases involve misdemeanors for crimes such as drunk driving, domestic violence and petty theft.

It is hardly the type of caseload to warrant special protection for jurors. But this small gray courthouse may be the only one in the country where every juror in every criminal case gets the protective robe of anonymity.

Philip K. Mautino, presiding judge of Los Cerritos Municipal Court, started the practice in January. He wanted to protect jury members, believing they were increasingly uneasy about doing their job in violence-weary Los Angeles.

In Mautino’s courthouse, only the jury clerk knows the names of the jurors. To everyone else, panelists are known by the last four digits of their laminated juror badges.

Elsewhere, anonymity is rarely used, and usually in cases in which jurors could be harassed or threatened, such as trials for the Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney King, the federal prosecution of reputed Mafia boss John Gotti and the court proceedings against the men accused of beating trucker Reginald O. Denny.

“We think a lot of people are afraid to serve on juries,” Mautino said. “Jurors can feel intimidated even when there isn’t an actual threat. I think people would be more relaxed and willing to serve if (anonymity) was used in more courts.”

Seattle Municipal Judge Thomas Clark, president of the American Judges Assn., said he knows of no other courthouse with a blanket policy of anonymity in criminal cases. Neither had any other legal expert interviewed heard of such a practice.

Mautino’s policy comes at a time when American interest in jurors has never been more intense. Many sensational trials are now broadcast gavel-to-gavel on television. The public and the news media want to know how jurors arrived at their decisions in high-profile cases.

Reaction to the policy in Bellflower has been mixed.

Rudolph A. Diaz, chairman of the Municipal Court Presiding Judges Assn., was pleasantly surprised when told about it. He said many people are reluctant to serve on juries, and some have told him they fear being approached at home after their case ends.

“I think if it’s something that keeps jurors happy, then it’s something we should try to work out for them,” Diaz said. “I don’t see how it can harm a case. They make better jurors when they are secure, deciding on law and evidence rather than in anger or fear.”

But some scholars and lawyers object to blanket anonymity, calling it a heavy-handed solution to a problem that isn’t that serious. Others believe it’s an assault on American justice.

“It’s like asking for the death penalty for an illegal U-turn,” said Abraham Abramovsky, a professor at Fordham University’s law school in New York.

“The whole reason for juries is that we don’t want secrecy clouding our judicial arena. If you can’t find out who you’re dealing with, then what is the system for? You lose the reason this country is different than all others. You lose a true jury system. And that is too good to lose.”

Despite such criticism, jurors in Bellflower seem to like the protection offered by anonymity.

“It made me feel safer,” said Jan, a juror in a recent domestic dispute case who so appreciated the safety that her anonymity gave her, she declined to have her surname used. “I was dealing with a charge connected with a potentially violent individual. I kept thinking I was glad he didn’t have a lot of information about me.”

Deirdre, an alternate juror in that same case, said she was relieved she did not have to disclose her name. Two years ago, when she was a juror in a carjacking case in Los Angeles, she recalled feeling vulnerable about having to state her name in open court. Several of her fellow jurors also felt nervous, she said.

Mautino said he first sensed such problems a couple of years ago when his wife was a juror in Superior Court. The first night, she took a circuitous two-hour route home because she was so nervous, Mautino said. She couldn’t discuss it, but later he learned she had helped convict a gang member of murder.

The memory of her fear hung with him. He was appointed to the bench last year, and when he became presiding judge this January, he decided to reassure jurors in his courthouse however he could.

Mautino believes that if he were to use anonymous juries only in the rare cases where panelists might be threatened or harassed, it could tilt the scale toward conviction by subtly implying that the defendant was someone to be feared. He reasons that withholding jurors’ names in every case, regardless of its nature, eliminates that bias.

Mautino described his policy as an “aggressive interpretation” of a 2-year-old section of the state Code of Civil Procedure that affords jurors the opportunity to have their names kept secret once a trial is over. He thought it was “worthless” to offer protection after jurors’ names have been public throughout a trial. So he decided to offer it at the beginning.

Even when jurors are anonymous, California law permits attorneys to petition the court for their names, addresses and phone numbers once the trial is over so that they can be interviewed to develop issues to use on appeal.

David Graeven, a San Francisco jury consultant, said anonymous juries can serve a purpose because “anxious jurors are less able to logically follow an argument. Anxiety produces loose-cannon jurors who could be more influenced by their biases or courtroom drama than by the evidence.”

But Peter G. Keane, chief deputy public defender in San Francisco, says hundreds of interviews with jurors during his career have led him to conclude they are “no more nervous about serving on a jury than when I started out 26 years ago.”

Keane, who is on the board of governors of the State Bar of California, said using anonymous juries without a specific finding of a need for it in each case “injects an aura of paranoia” into the system and “smacks of totalitarianism.”

“It’s absurd, ludicrous,” Keane said. “There’s no need for that kind of secrecy.”

Alban I. Niles, presiding judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court, reviewed the law upon which Mautino based his policy and said he suspects Mautino may have overstepped its intent. It seems clear, Niles said, that the Legislature wanted courts to find a “compelling” reason before withholding jurors’ names.

“I’m sure the judge’s intentions were good, but I wouldn’t recommend that practice,” Niles said.

Myrna S. Raeder, professor at Southwestern University School of Law and vice chairwoman of the American Bar Assn.’s committee on criminal procedure and evidence, said she would be “amazed” if Mautino’s policy withstood a legal challenge in higher courts.

State appeals courts have had little opportunity to rule on issues involving anonymous juries, legal experts said. But Raeder said federal appeals courts have held that judges must have a strong reason to use nameless panels and must take steps to make sure the need for anonymity does not prejudice the jury against the defendant.

Andrew M. Stein, a defense attorney who often practices in the Bellflower court, said he views Mautino as “fair, independent, creative and decisive, someone who likes to be on the cutting edge of making improvements.” But he thinks blanket jury anonymity is excessive.

“I tried a death penalty case (in) Downtown (Los Angeles) recently, and they didn’t have an anonymous jury there,” he said. “And here I am in Bellflower, representing a prominent surgeon for driving under the influence, and they want to use an anonymous jury. My client wasn’t a dangerous guy who was some threat to the jury. It was ridiculous.”

Terrence Kirk, an Austin, Tex., attorney who defended Branch Davidian member Ruth Riddle before an anonymous jury, rejected the argument that using anonymous juries in all cases eliminates the bias against a particular defendant.

“So if you deny the presumption of innocence across the board, then it’s not a problem?” he said. “That’s absurd. It just means the defense suffers in every case because it creates the idea that defendants as a class are people to be feared.”

Kirk and other defense attorneys said nameless juries put the defense at a disadvantage. Despite repeated statements about the presumption of innocence, they say, most jurors believe that if a defendant has been charged and brought to court, he or she is probably guilty.

The defense must overcome that prejudice, and using names helps to establish rapport during jury selection, Kirk said. Lacking the names creates “an aura of depersonalization” that makes it easier for jurors to view the defendant as “not really a person,” Kirk said.

Thomas Munsterman, director of the nonprofit Center for Jury Studies in Washington, D.C., said not knowing jurors’ names shouldn’t be crucial in selecting a fair jury because attorneys can still inquire into aspects of their lives that might indicate a bias. Despite that, he said he still had the feeling that withholding names creates “this sense that we’ve lost openness. It’s an unfortunate sign of the times.”

Other experts agreed.

Paul F. Rothstein, professor of law at Georgetown University, said once jurors’ names are hidden, some important and positive pressures are lost.

“Public scrutiny helps keep everyone open and honest,” he said. “You take that away, and questions arise about how honest jurors are being. Accountability to the community is an important pressure on them to do the right thing.”

The idea of accountability in the jury system dates back to the pre-Revolutionary War era, said Stephen J. Adler, author of a forthcoming book, “The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom.” In the late 18th Century, it was considered important that jurors be respected community members who could return from service and openly “vouch for the integrity of the justice system,” he said.

Although there is no express constitutional right of a defendant to know the names of jurors passing judgment upon him or her, knowing the names and basic information about jurors is “a piece of open-trial philosophy that underlies the American tradition,” said Julian Eule, associate dean of the UCLA School of Law and a constitutional law expert.

“It’s the same thinking that created the 6th Amendment (to the Constitution),” Eule said. “You have the right to confront your accusers, to have a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. It’s only a small step from there to knowing who is making the decision.”