Today I learned — TIL as they say on the interweb — from John Oliver that many counties, municipalities, and states outsource their jury selection process to private companies. Because it's cheaper or something, supposedly.
These are the logos of some of the companies:
That's only one bad thing I learned from 20 minutes with Mr. Oliver. It's not like I'm naive about jury selection (see this past post, for instance), but I admire how much he was able to pack into such a brief time, starting from the biased way jury lists are created (excluding people who don't vote or don't have drivers licenses, or from certain zip codes, or who come from a town that "happens" to be near the end of the alphabet). This is the part that is outsourced, and of course the companies' methods are proprietary, so we as taxpayers are not allowed to know how they come up with their lists, according to Oliver.
Then there are attorney challenges to jurors — for supposed cause or no cause at all, which is called a peremptory challenge. He touches on the Batson test and the recent Curtis Flowers case before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Flowers was released pending a new trial after having been convicted six times by all-white juries whose compositions were rigged by the same prosecutor again and again (and again and again and...).
The segment ends with suggestions on how to make jury selection more likely to result in a jury of peers, as we all suppose the Constitution intended.
You can watch the whole package here:
This fact I never knew made me wonder if my county and city outsource their jury pool work, and how I can find out.
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