Choices for County Grand Jury Again Include Few Latinos

Los Angeles County’s Superior Court judges have nominated only a handful of Latinos to serve on the Los Angeles County Grand Jury next year, continuing a pattern that defense attorneys and population experts say excludes Latinos and other minorities from the powerful citizens panel.

A list of prospective grand jurors obtained by The Times shows that people with Spanish surnames constitute less than 6% of the pool from which the 2000-01 grand jurors will be selected in June.

The ethnicity of the grand jurors has stirred controversy in recent weeks, as two criminal defense attorneys, in separate cases, aggressively challenged their clients’ grand jury indictments. The attorneys, Charles L. Lindner and Victor Sherman, say the selection process excludes Latinos. Such exclusion is discriminatory and violates their clients’ constitutional right to due process and equal protection, they charge.

Asked about the new grand jury pool, John R. Weeks, a geography professor at San Diego State University, said the apparent number of Latinos is consistent with numbers in previous years. Weeks has analyzed the ethnic makeup of grand juries in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

If the grand jury pool were representative of the population of eligible jurors, one would expect to find at least 32 Latinos among the 122 prospective panelists, said Weeks, who submitted a detailed study in Sherman’s case. Los Angeles County is more than 40% Latino. Only eight Latinos volunteered or were nominated by Superior Court judges for next year’s panel.

Presiding Judge Victor E. Chavez has declined to comment, saying the issue is in litigation.

But Sherman said Monday that the low numbers were “just bizarre. With all this going on, you would have thought they would have tried to do something.”

His client, Jaime Alejandro Mares, was indicted on two counts of murder with special circumstances in connection with the slaying of a passerby and a Los Angeles police officer during a car chase near Los Angeles International Airport in December 1998. Mares was indicted in June 1999.

The list obtained by The Times does not provide an ethnic breakdown of prospective grand jurors. However, Weeks said, the eight Spanish surnames, while not definitive, provide a reliable indicator of the number of Latinos being considered.

Weeks said the continuing low numbers, along with the court’s apparent resistance to change, supports the defense attorneys’ allegation of discrimination and institutional racism.

“I think, by and large, that judges are not particularly interested in pursuing this issue,” Weeks said. “I think they have in mind the idea that their selections are race neutral.”

Other California counties, faced with similar challenges, recently have switched to two grand juries--one selected by the judges to hear civil matters and provide government oversight, and another chosen from the pool of trial jurors to issue criminal indictments. According to court papers, those counties include San Francisco, Santa Clara, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino.

But, Weeks said, “things haven’t changed much” in Los Angeles County’s manner of selecting grand jurors, even with “ample evidence from other counties that it’s do-able.” Los Angeles County’s resistance to change, he said, “is just going to add fuel to the charge of institutional racism.”

The list indicates that the judges did improve their record from last year, when, according to court papers, they failed to nominate a single Latino.

Of the Superior Court’s 428 judges, 46 made nominations for the updated list. Six judges nominated people with Latino surnames: Presiding Judge Victor E. Chavez and Judges William R. Pounders, William Highberger, Richard P. Kalustian, Gary H. Nishimoto and Morton Rochman. The other Latinos in the pool volunteered for service.

Grand jurors are told that their service is as demanding as a full-time job. They must be available five days a week, 50 weeks a year. They are paid $25 per day, plus mileage.

Judicial participation in the selection of grand jurors is a remnant of the grand jury’s traditional role as a government watchdog. During the 1990s, the grand jury became a popular tool for prosecutors, who could subpoena witnesses and records and obtain indictments from the panel in sensitive or difficult cases. Using the grand jury also allowed prosecutors to sidestep public preliminary hearings.

Challenges to the ethnic makeup of the Los Angeles grand jury are nothing new: They date back to the 1960s. A challenge a decade ago was unsuccessful and allegedly resulted in judicial ill will and retaliation against the lawyers who raised the issue, according to court documents.

Lindner has said in court papers that he was audited, threatened with prosecution for fraud and removed from the list of lawyers appointed to try capital cases in retaliation for his 1990 grand jury challenge.

Attorneys Sherman and Lindner, possibly soon to be joined by other members of the criminal defense bar, also are seeking to disqualify all of the county’s judges from deciding their grand jury challenge. The lawyers allege that the judges either participate in or have a stake in the selection process and therefore can’t be objective.

“In light of the history of discrimination, as well as acrimony and retaliation against those who have challenged the selection process,” Sherman said in court papers, “it is clear that all judges on the Los Angeles Superior Court should be recused or disqualified” from ruling on the challenges.

One judge, Thomas L. Willhite, already has stepped aside, but two others now assigned to the criminal cases refuse to do so. Judges James M. Ideman and William F. Fahey say they did not participate in the selection of grand jurors and are free of prejudice. They dismissed the lawyers’ challenge to their objectivity, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Fahey, who is hearing the case against Lindner’s client, auto fraud suspect Regina Vartanova, said in a written order that he never has participated in grand jury selection and was not on the bench a decade ago, when Lindner alleges three other judges retaliated against him.

Ideman had been scheduled to hear Sherman’s arguments today, but instead issued an order dismissing the lawyer’s challenge to his objectivity. Ideman also denies any bias and says that, as a retired judge appointed by the state Supreme Court, he has no role in regular court business, including the selection of grand jurors.

Sherman said he will ask Ideman today to reconsider.