California Moves to Ditch Citizenship Requirement for Jury Duty

[theworldismine13]

California Moves to Ditch Citizenship Requirement for Jury Duty - US News and World Report

The California State Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to remove the requirement in state law that jurors be U.S. citizens.

The bill, AB 1401, passed the state assembly with 45 votes in favor and 25 votes in opposition and now goes to the state senate.

The legislation allows the jury pool to be extended to "lawfully present immigrants." Potential jurors are pulled from state Department of Motor Vehicles records. The bill does not drop the requirement that would-be jurors speak English.

"You are not required to be a citizen to participate in the judicial process as a party, as a witness, to work for the courts or even be a judge," said Democratic Assemblyman Luis Alejo, one of seven authors of the bill, the Sacramento Bee reports. "It's only a requirement to be a juror. It's not a requirement to be a citizen to serve in the military, either."

Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly objected to the bill, saying, according to the Bee: "We can't completely erase the distinction between being a citizen and not. ... There are certain requirements and responsibilities of being a citizen, and jury duty is one of those."

If passed, the legislation would make California the first state in the country to allow non-citizens on juries, according to The Associated Press.

Supporters of the legislation point out that women were not allowed to serve on juries in many parts of the U.S. for much of the twentieth century.

Utah was the first state to allow women to serve on juries in 1898. A 1937 Time magazine article noted that despite ratification of the 19th Amendment allowing females to vote, 26 states still excluded them from juries. Alabama extended jury service to women after being ordered to do so by a federal court in 1966.

"This isn't about affording someone who would come in as a juror something," Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez said Thursday, according to the AP. "But rather understanding that the importance of the jury selection process of affording justice to the person in that courtroom."

 

[Mowgli]

A jury of your peers, illegal immigrants.

 

[The Real]

A jury of your peers, illegal immigrants.

Read the article. You have to prove you're a legal immigrant and that you can speak English before you're cleared for jury duty.

If a wider jury pool allows for better jury selection (and logically, it should,) I don't see any problem here.

 

[FijiWatr]

wow

The liberals have lost it

 

[theworldismine13]

Read the article. You have to prove you're a legal immigrant and that you can speak English before you're cleared for jury duty.

If a wider jury pool allows for better jury selection (and logically, it should,) I don't see any problem here.

for the love of god, what on earth is your criteria for better jury selection?????

a person could literally walk off the boat after growing up in another country and not be familiar with american laws and be on jury duty the next day

 

[gho3st]

 

[Mowgli]

Read the article. You have to prove you're a legal immigrant and that you can speak English before you're cleared for jury duty.

If a wider jury pool allows for better jury selection (and logically, it should,) I don't see any problem here.

That equates to a peer to you? We are not one world, one culture, one society. Would you want someone whos laws are drastically different from one extreme to another on a us jury. It makes no sense.

 

[Hiphoplives4eva]

for the love of god, what on earth is your criteria for better jury selection?????

a person could literally walk off the boat after growing up in another country and not be familiar with american laws and be on jury duty the next day

Ignore Mr. Real. his job is to defend whatever lunacy is told to him by his liberal masters.

 

[concise]

for the love of god, what on earth is your criteria for better jury selection?????

a person could literally walk off the boat after growing up in another country and not be familiar with american laws and be on jury duty the next day

We already have plenty of Americans here who are unfamiliar with American laws.

That equates to a peer to you? We are not one world, one culture, one society. Would you want someone whos laws are drastically different from one extreme to another on a us jury. It makes no sense.

If they live in this country, and have to follow the same laws, then, yes, they are.

 

[cleanface coney]

so what happen when they find out you not a citizen legally?

 

[theworldismine13]

We already have plenty of Americans here who are unfamiliar with American laws.

i dont follow how increasing the pool among immigrants would help solve that problem, so im not really sure what your point is aside from insulting american citizens

 

[Mowgli]

We already have plenty of Americans here who are unfamiliar with American laws.




If they live in this country, and have to follow the same laws, then, yes, they are.

A legal immigrant understands this country more then a citizen?

 

[the cac mamba]

 

[The Real]

for the love of god, what on earth is your criteria for better jury selection?????

a person could literally walk off the boat after growing up in another country and not be familiar with american laws and be on jury duty the next day

Better = wider pool. The point of the jury is to have a diverse group of opinions in order to eliminate biases and to look at the issue from as many angles as possible in order to get closest to the truth, which is why demographics are strongly factored into whether someone actually makes it to jury or not after they are chosen to be interviewed, so anything that contributes to that diversity is good. If the accused or the victim of a crime are immigrants, having one immigrant on the panel might be a sensible decision, depending on the context. Regardless, though, there's nothing inherent to being an immigrant that disqualifies one from competence as a juror, so on that basis alone, it's justified.

And no, a person could not walk off the boat and get on jury duty the next day. You'd need valid identification from the State, first, since jury pools are chosen through DMV records. In order to register at the DMV, you need at least a temporary resident card. And those people wouldn't be the ones chosen anyway, as the article species that only immigrants would (temporary residents are not legally counted as immigrants,) so basically only people who had already gotten a green card or were on the citizenship path would be eligible. In order to be on that path, you need to have lived here for many years.

Secondly, most Americans are completely unfamiliar with the laws they have to deliberate over when chosen for jury duty. The specifics of constitutional and criminal law are not requirements in schools, nor are they taught to most Americans, so using that as a requirement would not focus on whether someone was an immigrant or not- just on people who know the law or don't (though it's currently not part of the criteria at all.) The jury only learns the specifics of those laws in the initial stages of the case. There's no reason someone who was an immigrant wouldn't be able to grasp that information, providing they spoke English and had lived here for the amount of time that they would have had to in order to be selected, any worse than the average American.

Additionally, most immigrants who are on the citizenship path often learn more about the constitution than people who are born here, because the citizenship test actually involves that kind of information, and because criminal status is something immigrants have to know about before they immigrate here, for their own sake. Again though, that's neither here nor there for criminal law cases.

Finally, being selected for jury duty does not mean you'll make it to the jury. You do know there is an interview process first, that involves both the prosecution and the defense, right? @ thinking random, illiterate, ignorant immigrants will be sought out by lawyers.

 

[theworldismine13]

A legal immigrant understands this country more then a citizen?

i sure our justice system will improve if we had more people like Zubeidat "my baby aint hurt nobody" Tsarnaeva in the jury pool