
California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries - jelliclesfarm
https://calmatters.org/justice/2019/11/california-former-felons-becoming-jurors-new-2020-law/
======
gnicholas
I've served on a jury in CA and have seen jury selection on a couple
occasions. Based on what I've seen, I think it will remain highly unlikely
that a convicted felon will make their way onto a jury of a criminal trial
(civil trials might be more likely).

In the standard questionnaire that prospective jurors are given, they are
asked if they or members of their immediate family have been victims of a
crime, or if they work in law enforcement. Now that felons will be part of the
jury pool, they will undoubtedly also ask if they have been convicted of a
crime themselves.

In my experience, judges will themselves excuse jurors who have family in law
enforcement (parent, spouse, sibling), which means the lawyers don't have to
bother using a challenge on it. I would expect the same will happen with
many/most criminal convictions, especially when they are related to the crime
that is alleged.

And even when they are unrelated, I expect the prosecutor would dig in and ask
questions like "have your feelings about respect for the law changed since you
were convicted of embezzlement?" — even if it's an assault trial. These
questions will be uncomfortable for the potential jurors, who may feel like
they're being humiliated and put on trial all over again. I would not want to
be a felon being questioned for jury selection by a prosecutor.

note: my experience is in San Mateo county jury selection as a private
citizen. I am also a former lawyer, and almost all of my lawyer friends have
never made it past jury selection. I served once, only because I emphasized
that I practiced tax law, which is very different from criminal law.

~~~
jedberg
I think it's kind of random. Last time I was on jury selection, the defendant,
a black man, was accused of robbing a bank at gunpoint.

The woman being questioned for jury duty was asked about being a victim of
crime. She said, "I've been a bank teller for over 20 years. I've been robbed
at gunpoint three times, and every time it was a black man. Black men are
always guilty".

I was shocked she would say such a thing, but even more shocked to see her
back the next day. She wasn't dismissed.

~~~
pell
The jury system seems completely corrupt to me. I am glad we do not use this
method in criminal trials here in Germany where I live.

~~~
rootsudo
Corrupt? It's a jury of your peers, how is it corrupt? It's random people that
decide your fate.

In German it's judges. So a judge tries you and says you're guilty or
innocent?

You have to forego your right of trial by Jury in the USA for that to be the
case.

~~~
kevingadd
The corruption is that the lawyers are allowed to take advantage of the jury
dismissal system to stack the jury, and in many locations they will do so.

~~~
leetcrew
have you ever served on a jury? it really does not work this way. the defense
and prosecution both get to dismiss as many people with obvious bias (eg,
victim of gun violence in a murder trial) as they want. then they both get to
dismiss a small number of people without giving a reason. usually there are
not enough of the second type to actually "stack" a jury. plus the other side
is going to use their strikes to dismiss your favorites anyway, and I believe
the defense generally gets more strikes.

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vishnu_ks
I recently listened to a podcast in which James Beshar interviews an anonymous
San Francisco police officer who has been in the service for a long time. The
police officer said that there are a lot of loopholes(not talking about
paroles, probation or anything related) in California justice system in
particular that allows felons to come out much faster than the actual time
sentenced. For example felons that are sentenced for 30+ years in prison for
committing serious crimes can come out in as fast as in 15 years by staying in
certain prisons/jails that counts the time served as 2x or 3x. So lawyers game
this so that the felons stay in these prisons/jails longer than other prisons
and come out faster. I personally has not thought much about any of these
issues and neither have a stand or expertise on what is right or wrong. I
found what the police officer said (so did the host) very interesting and
thought its worth sharing here.

[https://anchor.fm/belowtheline/episodes/37--Anonymous--
San-F...](https://anchor.fm/belowtheline/episodes/37--Anonymous--San-
Francisco-Police-Officer-e914q7)

Updated the comment for clarification.

~~~
gamblor956
The "anonymous officer" is misstating the way the rules actually work to the
point of basically lying about them. (Actual rules:
[http://www.courts.ca.gov/partners/documents/CalculatingCusto...](http://www.courts.ca.gov/partners/documents/CalculatingCustodyCredits.pdf))

Custody credits. For crimes committed after October 2011, defendants who do
not misbehave while in jail will receive 1 day of "conduct credits" for every
1 days of actual jail time served. Felons will similarly receive 1 day of
conduct credit for every day of actual time served in prison while on good
behavior. However, felons convicted of a violent crime only receive 15%
conduct credit for time served (so 1 day of "conduct credit" for every 15 days
of jail time served) and 0% credit if convicted of murder.

The only crimes you can (or could) receive 30+ year sentences for in CA are
violent crimes (like rape, armed robbery, or murder) or 3-strikes sentences,
and such sentencing is no longer possible for a 3rd strike unless the 3rd
strike is a violent crime.

 _So lawyers game this so that the felons stay in these prisons /jails longer
than other prisons and come out faster._

The police officer is lying. Credits are based on statutory formulas and no
facility provides any more custody credits than any other, because the
facility doesn't determine how many credits you get.

~~~
vishnu_ks
Can you listen to the podcast from 12th minute for a few minutes so that we
all are in same page? Its highly possible I oversimplified and missed some key
elements since I listened to this episode a while back.

~~~
thenewnewguy
Hi, not the original poster here but someone familiar with California's
justice system. I went ahead and listened for a bit to what the podcast and
its guest had to say.

Your relaying of the podcast, while a little simplified, is not the problem -
there aren't "key elements" missing. The problem is that _the information on
the podcast is blatantly wrong._

~~~
vishnu_ks
Okay. Thank you for the confirmation.

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elchief
If you served your time, you served your time. If not, shoulda got more time

~~~
bufferoverflow
Would you let a pedophile who served his time babysit your children?

~~~
colejohnson66
False equivalence. No, but I’d let someone convicted of a robbery 20 years ago
and nothing since serve me at a fast food restaurant since they’ve served
their debt to society.

~~~
RaceWon
> False equivalence. No, but I’d let someone convicted of a robbery 20 years
> ago and nothing since serve me at a fast food

This appears as a perfect false equivalence imo. Would you also let someone
who was convicted of poisoning people serve you fast food?

Here's some [0] stats about repeat offeders

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism)

~~~
colejohnson66
No I wouldn’t, but some would. I should’ve mentioned that where they’re
allowed to work should be dependent on what their crime was. A robber can’t
work at a bank, etc.

~~~
RaceWon
> No I wouldn’t, but some would. I should’ve mentioned that where they’re
> allowed to work should be dependent on what their crime was. A robber can’t
> work at a bank, etc.

However; a robber can serve as a jurist? I don't understand your logic; if it
was you who were on trial, wouldn't you hope that the jury of your peers had a
higher degree of ethics than a gal who robbed a bank? I know I would.

~~~
colejohnson66
The logic is: they have served their debt to society, let them be free. Don’t
continually punish them even after they’re out. If you want to punish them
more, keep them in prison longer.

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jimbob45
Why is anyone ever barred from jury duty outside of severe disability? Voir
dire seems to exist to mitigate any conceivable juror issues.

~~~
wahern
Once upon a time jury duty was considered a privilege, a way for upstanding
citizens to shape their community. Losing that privilege was a social
punishment, and a way to ensure justice was aspirational--lenient and harsh
according to how the community expected itself to behave and evolve.

The Magna Carta, which secured the right to a jury trial, only concerned the
rights of the landed gentry. The jury trial was about the landed class having
the right to deliberate on the disputes of its own members. It was copied from
the system used for matters pertaining to Church lands and clerical crimes;
matters that were required to be settled by other clergy through a parallel
court system administered by the Church, whose rights and powers were derived
from papal authority.

This notion isn't entirely antiquated today. Some scholars argue that one of
the reasons the American criminal justice system has become so harsh on
minorities is because juries are usually composed of members who live in
separate communities from the accused. Their interests are in tamping down on
crime, with little incentive to consider the disruption caused by wrenching
away men and women from the labor pool and their families. According to this
perspective, we should maybe return to a system where jury pools are called
from much smaller geographical districts--literally the neighborhood where the
crime occurred.

When share cropping was still a thing in the South, before penal labor became
a state enterprise, and even during slavery, juries were often quite lenient
toward the working class, including blacks. (Conviction rates were much closer
to parity between white and black defendants!) Jury members knew that the
accused likely worked for someone else in the community, and owed debts to
others; unnecessary punishment[1] of the accused indirectly punished jury
members' friends and families. Things worked similarly at the turn of the 19th
century in major cities, when ethnic communities were compact and courts
weren't centralized downtown. Jail time meant leaving a wife and kids without
needed income, creating an immediate burden on the community (e.g. more
expenditures from the neighborhood church's coffers).

If juries were again composed of members from the community _directly_
impacted by a crime, then it might still make sense to penalize felons from
serving. Juries would once again be more about the community policing itself,
as opposed to today where we principally conceive of juries as impartial and
fair (in the roulette sense) adjudicators of guilt and gatekeepers of
retributive justice. Fortunately, most crime is still local. "Black-on-black"
is a catchphrase today, but crime is generally neighbor-on-neighbor
everywhere.

[1] Of course, if you were black then "unnecessary" would need to take into
account the need to sow fear in the black community. But so long as slavery
and share cropping kept blacks tied to the plantations and farms, that was far
less common than in later years when they became more mobile.

~~~
pastage
There is also the concept of lay judges, people who are non educated in law
but are paid a small sum.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_judge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_judge)

~~~
jeltz
Sweden uses lay judges a lot in the lower layers of court. It is not a perfect
system and we have had a couple of scandals where lay judges have pushed
personal agendas in court. But I still think I prefer our system to jury
trials.

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3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I’m normally automatically skeptical of anything passed by our legislature
here (which passes laws to ban plastic straws and water in restaurants but
couldn’t care less about feces and mental illness all over the streets).

For this, I’m totally 100% behind the decision. A jury of our peers is as good
as it gets, folks. Even with the drawbacks it will never get better. We need
to protect it and honor it, and that includes letting those who have felt the
strong arm of the law decide whether the law itself is applied fairly to other
people.

~~~
EliRivers
_A jury of our peers is as good as it gets, folks._

Is it? How about professional jurors. Would that be an improvement? Or a mix
of the two; some peers, some professionals. Or what about short-engagement
professional jurors - selected from the citizenry at large, but then given
some proper training and acting as jurors for a year. Or perhaps a cadre of
professionally trained jurors who take a few months to become trained, and
then simply do jury duty alongside their untrained colleagues. Is a simple
jury of peers really the best we can do?

~~~
kevingadd
What specifically makes "professional jurors" better, though? I won't say the
idea isn't appealing, but what about making them professionals makes them
better than our peers? There are already a bunch of heavily regulated
professionals involved in the process so it's kind of arbitrary to claim that
we need to regulate more of it.

Why not limit witness testimony to professionals too?

~~~
sethammons
In the jury I sat on, we had a question about the the law and it's wording.
The response we got was, "you have already received your instructions." Gee,
thanks. Someone more well versed might have better understood the definition.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
One of the juries I served, in the UK, had a similar question about a specific
aspect of the law related to the trial. There was a 30 minute recess and
judge, prosecution and defence discussed how best to explain - presumably
without influencing in favour of either side - then we were brought back,
told, and asked if that was enough. It was surprisingly involved for what we
thought a simple clarification.

Having been on the inside of juries now, it restores some faith in some
aspects, but you also realise far clearer where potential problems and limits
are.

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goodluckchuck
There’s no such thing as a former felon. A felon is a person whose been
convicted of a felony. Once convicted you’re a convict. Reformed felons...
sure. But not former.

~~~
gamblor956
If you really want to be pedantic, felons can petition to have their criminal
records expunged, including most felonies, and therefore would be former
felons.

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c3534l
I feel like former convicts will take their role very seriously. More
seriously than other people might.

~~~
koheripbal
That's naive

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robsinatra
They should require a former felon on every jury

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mindslight
No, it won't. If they just mean the state judiciary will summon felons to
spend a day at the courthouse, sure. But prosecutors will surely be using
their vetoes on such jurors due to their experience with the system, as they
do with anyone that speaks a hint about jury nullification or otherwise seems
hard to lead.

~~~
throwaway2048
Prosecutors and defense council don't get an infinite amount of vetoes

~~~
gnicholas
There is a limit on peremptory challenges, for which no reason needs to be
given. But I don't think there is a limit on for-cause dismissals.

~~~
throwaway2048
If dismissing people for felonies was a valid cause by itself, then this law
would be completely meaningless, that wouldn't escape a judge overseeing the
proceedings.

~~~
gnicholas
I would guess that some felons might make it onto a jury with a felony that
was (1) a long time ago, (2) completely unrelated to the felony alleged in the
current trial, and (3) generally regarded to be a more minor crime.

But I would guess that few felons will make it onto juries, and the ones that
do will endure embarrassing questions during jury selections, in front of a
room full of their peers, about their past crimes and whether or not they are
now sufficiently honest citizens.

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RickJWagner
I hope the jury selectors are sharp.

Felons made poor decisions in the past. The opportunity for problematic
behavior is present-- the poor decision making had better be confined to the
past and not the present.

Proceed with caution.

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mtnGoat
As they should be! If someone pays their debt to society all their rights
should be restored. (Gun rights being the acception, in certain cases, IMHO).

~~~
Teknoman117
I mean I don't like the idea of people who committed a violent crime having
legal access to firearms either, but if we truly believed our "justice" system
reformed people, why would they need to have their rights restricted following
their release?

I mean I know our justice system is busted and you'd have to be insane to say
it actually reformed people instead of just locking them away because we don't
give a shit about doing anything else, but either way...

~~~
toredash
Would you say the same thing if a former convict of child abuse wanted to work
closely with your kinds in school, sports or other arenas? I for sure would
not be happy with it.

Certain things are not a right to have, e.g. driving license or be working in
a specific profession. Firearms in the US is special but the use of firearm in
the US is a topic for itself.

~~~
serf
> Would you say the same thing if a former convict of child abuse wanted to
> work closely with your kinds in school, sports or other arenas? I for sure
> would not be happy with it.

'what about the children?'

it's a tired argument that always has the same answer : some people would
care, some wouldn't care, but the phrasing of your prompt provides a moral
imperative to agree, no matter the question.

you'll never get honesty that way, you'll only hear what you phrase the
question to hear : in this case no one is going to dare say "Let's have the
child abusers in school.".

~~~
toredash
I think it is a matter of risk.

Would I risk a hiring a shoplifter in my store? Yes. Would I let a person who
commited fraud to work with money ? Yes. What they do isn't something that
could not be "repaired".

Buy you raise very valid views, thanks for that

------
pkaye
Now if they would just compensate jurors atleast at minimum wage. The current
rate barely pays for the daily public transportation costs.

------
Bostonian
The title is misleading -- someone convicted of a felony is still a felon
after being released from prison.

Juries create labelled data -- defendants are found guilty or not guilty --
but how do we know what characteristics of juries are likely to result in the
most accurate verdicts, since we don't have a measure of whether defendants
are truly guilty or innocent? Has anyone looked at what jury characteristics
predict overturning of verdicts on appeal?

~~~
ajdlinux
> The title is misleading -- someone convicted of a felony is still a felon
> after being released from prison.

Perhaps it's time for the US to follow the lead of most of its common law
brethren in the Commonwealth and get rid of the terms "misdemeanour" and
"felony".

~~~
ta09876
What's wrong with having words for "small crime" and "big crime"?

~~~
ajdlinux
I'm more concerned with having a word like "felon" to categorise _people_ into
"small criminals" and "big criminals", rather than saying what it is they were
actually convicted of.

Other common law jurisdictions get by just fine by categorising small crimes
as "summary" and larger ones as "indictable" for the purposes of criminal
procedure (not that this categorisation maps all that well in the US where the
right to jury trials is more entrenched). There isn't a comparable term to
"felon", which is fine, because it's much better to talk about a "convicted
murderer" or "convicted drug trafficker" or "convicted drink driver". And laws
imposing restrictions on ex-prisoners generally apply to specific crimes, or
to crimes carrying particular sentences with the threshold varying depending
on the type of restriction.

At that point, there just isn't much need for the word "felony".

