More Judges Answering Call for Jury Duty

With three times as many prospective jurors being called, Los Angeles courts are granting fewer exemptions from service.

Not even judges can escape anymore.

James A. Bascue, presiding judge of Los Angeles County Superior Court, in January ended what were once common exemptions for judges.

“We are here to follow the law,” Bascue said last week.

Under state law, judges are not exempt from jury duty. But they, like other professionals, had been granted “hardship” exemptions.

While the pros and cons are debated in judges’ lunchrooms around the county, one of the most vocal critics is the top federal trial judge in Southern California.

Chief U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter does not want his federal judges spending precious court time on jury duty.

“It’s just raising havoc with our calendar here,” he said. “They don’t understand we have our own court system to run.”

Hatter is among those who believe the public is better served with a judge presiding over a trial, not sitting idle in a jury assembly room. In federal court, all judges are exempt; however, judicial leaders are supporting federal legislation that would end job-related exemptions, court spokesman Dick Carelli said.

But others say judges should not be treated differently than other citizens forced to take days off from work to wait in cramped courthouses to be called as jurors.

“There is nothing about being a judge that is so unique among other professions to excuse a judge from jury duty,” said California Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who in 1997 sat with other jurors on the marble floor of the Beverly Hills courthouse waiting for the jury assembly room to open.

In Los Angeles County and throughout California and the nation, judicial leaders are focusing on how to improve the entire jury process--from expanding the lists of voters and licensed drivers they use to find potential jurors to helping jurors in their deliberations to reach better decisions.

One goal is to make the jury pool more representative of the community it serves, experts said.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor said judges can benefit from the experience. “I can’t think of a better learning process,” she said.

Need for 10,000 Jurors Each Day

It also has great public relations value for the Los Angeles trial court, which is trying to round up more jurors to meet its 10,000-juror-a-day demand. More jurors are needed as the court switches from calls for two weeks of service to a convenient one-trial system that releases most jurors after one day if they are not picked for a jury.

When Lance Ito walked into the Pasadena courthouse in 1999 to report for jury duty, everyone from bailiffs to jurors recognized him as the judge who presided over the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

“I wanted to be, very prominently, there,” he said. “I wanted to make sure the people in my community know I serve on jury duty.”

In his downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Ito makes a point of telling potential jurors that he knows what it’s like to be in their shoes. “I can say with a straight face, ‘I’ve been there, done that, had the inconvenience.’ ”

Last month, when U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Morrow walked into a Pasadena courtroom, the trial judge recognized her.

“I was astonished to have a federal judge,” said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Phillip J. Argento, who excused Morrow because they are friends. Jurors may be excused if they know anyone involved in the case, including the judge.

“In retrospect, I was really glad that I did it,” Morrow said. “It was really a good refresher for me.”

G. Thomas Munsterman, a jury researcher at the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., said he once clipped newspaper articles about judges who served on juries--including former California Chief Justice Donald R. Wright, who served on a criminal jury in downtown Los Angeles in 1980--because it was so rare. But he stopped a few years ago as it became less unusual.

The trend, he said, is not directed at judges but at all professions that once were exempted from jury duty. In California, the list included airline pilots, telegraph operators, ferry boat captains and, Munsterman’s favorite, “keepers of almshouses.”

After years of receiving exemptions, brain surgeons are being told to shut down operating rooms and chief executives are being ordered to close their boardrooms to make time for jury duty, Connor said.

She said jury duty should be scheduled just like a vacation or professional conference.

But Hatter said a shortage of federal judges, combined with a large caseload, makes it too difficult to release a judge, if just for one day. “It’s more important for us to keep our doors open,” he said. “Who’s going to run the court?”

Like other prospective jurors, federal judges may postpone jury duty until a more convenient time or ask for a courthouse that offers the faster one-trial option, Bascue said.

Still, Hatter and other critics said judges should never serve as jurors because they might unfairly influence other jurors during deliberation with their extensive knowledge of the legal system. That is the same argument once used to exempt lawyers, who now are regularly seated as trial jurors.

Munsterman said if a criminal court judge served on a civil jury, he or she may not know any more about that law than another well-educated juror on the panel.

Some say jury duty is a waste of time for judges because they never will be picked as a jurors. That’s the same excuse, according to a recent national study, given by most people for ignoring their jury summonses.

Three years ago, Superior Court Judge David Workman served as a juror in a three-day civil trial.

“I don’t think I was treated any differently than the others,” Workman said. “I didn’t find they deferred to me on the matter. I was just one of the 12.”