Bill to Ensure Anonymity of Jurors Is Killed

Legislation allowing jurors in all criminal trials--from misdemeanors to murder cases--to serve anonymously and be identified only by a number was killed Tuesday in the state Senate.

Proponents of the bill (SB 1199) argued that more citizens would be willing to serve as jurors if they could be assured of their personal safety in trials involving violent crimes and gang members.

Under a recently enacted law, the names and addresses of jury members are made confidential at the end of a criminal trial.

In addition, judges can keep the identities of jurors secret at the start of a trial if they find a compelling interest to use confidentiality, as was done in the O.J. Simpson and Rodney King trials.

But the bill’s author, state Sen. Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia), said more protections are needed to increase jurors’ sense of security. His measure would have allowed jurors, as well as lawyers and judges, to request confidentiality at the outset of a trial.

Joining Mountjoy in supporting the bill was Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, organizations representing police chiefs and sheriffs, and Municipal Court Judge Phillip Mautino of Bellflower.

Lined up against them was an unusual alliance of prosecutors, public defenders, trial court judges, newspaper publishers and civil libertarians. The six-member Senate Criminal Procedure Committee first stripped the confidential jury provision from the bill and then killed the rest of the measure when it mustered only one vote.

Mautino said the increasing failure of jurors to respond for jury service has reached a crisis in Los Angeles County, where he said only 4% of those called actually serve.

Elimination of juror stress and fear of intimidation, which he said confidentiality would provide, would encourage more citizens to serve on juries, Mautino said.

Those who testified against the bill conceded that there may be cases when juror anonymity is appropriate, but argued that a blanket policy of concealing names would strike at the constitutional right to a fair and public trial.

“We believe that the public trust will be eroded greatly by a statute that creates a presumption of anonymous juries,” said Thomas Newton of the California Newspaper Publishers Assn.