STACKING THE JURY IN GEORGIA
We have been informed by an alert correspondent of a likely jury-rigging scheme in south Georgia. It may be that variants of this kind of sleazy operation are common throughout the country. If you are rarely or never called for jury duty despite being registered to vote and licensed to drive, perhaps a little digging around might yield some interesting information. If and when jury-rigging can be identified in a local judicial district, the press might be very interested in what you have uncovered. Such information could be of great utility in promoting awareness of FIJA, and could be used to rally excluded groups around the issue of jury rights.
In Georgia, it appears that the local legal establishment draws names for the jury pool from voters who have voted in the Republican primary election. It is known that some people are selected repeatedly in short periods of time, while others are seldom selected--once in twenty years, for instance. In addition, a secret list of jurors who have given guilty verdicts in the past is maintained by the District Attorney. A local defense attorney petitioned the court for a copy of that list because it gave the D.A. an unfair advantage during jury selection, but the judge refused to require the D.A. to release the list.
The question, of course, is are people being selected over and over again for "hanging juries"? The D.A. could build an impressive conviction record by doing this, but defendants' rights to a fair trial are being shredded!
A local attorney points out that conviction-prone jurors are the kind of people insurance companies love to have hear personal-injury cases, and they tend to side with polluters against environmentalists, and with the establishment against civil rights plaintiffs. The Jury Commission is scrambling to cover its tracks now that questions have been raised.