A ‘glitch’ left young people off jury rolls | Hacker News Reader

A ‘glitch’ left young people off jury rolls

nytimes.com

65 pointsPinckney35 comments

Meanwhile I (a foreigner who has to report every change of address I make) continue to be selected for jury duty and then reply again with “dude I’m a foreigner”

I can see a reason for it to be the way it (ICE having possible access to a database of foreigners on US soil), but I agree that dealing with repeated problems like this one is exasperating. I think Selective Service does the same thing (occasionally asking foreigners to enlist for US military service by accident).

>occasionally asking foreigners to enlist for US military service

Only if there is a draft.

Draft isn’t asking, so maybe it’s periodic “hey would you like to be in the army?”

Foreigners join the US army all the time, often with the hope of gaining US citizenship

That may change given the current administration claiming that Defending Freedom and America doesn't make you worthy of being American.

Registering for selective service isn't being drafted, it's adding you name to the registry of those eligible to be drafted, if needed.

US males aged 18-25 are compelled to register, under penalty. You must also update the agency in event you move. Despite a recent US SCOTUS ruling that only requiring males to register is unconstitutional, the agency stands by the law as written. See "STATEMENT ON RECENT COURT CASES PERTAINING TO WOMEN AND SELECTIVE SERVICE REGISTRATION" at [1]

Selective service also has nothing to do with Jury duty - thats normally driven by voter registration as it tends to be one the most accurate records of who lives in a jurisdiction.

I've been of voting age for more than half my life now, and I've yet to be summoned. :shrug:

[1] https://www.sss.gov/

Sorry, I was unclear -- what I was trying to say is, if you're registered for selective service couldn't that result in the various military sending you "hey, do you want to join the <insert service here>"?

I wasn't a permanent resident during the age window for selective service, so I can't speak to any of the selective service rules, just my unceasing jury summons :D

In my experience, no. I was recruited as I was graduating high school, but after I declined the Navy after finding out the recruiter was lying to me, never heard from any branch again. (I was being recruited for ROTC) I can't say if my experience is typical or not, but I don't think the selective service is allowed to act as a directory for spamming for recruits. It's there as the registry for the lottery that the draft becomes, if enacted.

Ok, what is it the recruiter lie about (given this is a theme, and I've never been actively recruited, I would pity the military service that wanted someone with my vision and coordination :) )

Basically, the recruiter promised I'd being doing work in my destined field (was studying electrical engineering) during summers off from school. When I was on campus for a scholarship interview, the officer there in charge of the ROTC program chuckled and told me straight faced something along the lines of "no, you'll be swabbing decks until you graduate."

So, I opted to go the self paid route. Figured after that I couldn't trust anything.

After scholarships and a little financial help from my parents, I graduated in 2003 with about 15k in loans on a 120k priced 4-year education with a dual BSEE and BSCPE.

Thanks for clarifying this issue for me. I got the letter in 2010 or 2011, and I no longer remember the specifics of what was being asked of me beyond it being some kind of registration for involving the military and the sender being Selective Service.

All appropriate-age male residents of the US have to register for the Select Service system, which org would implement a draft if required.

To register for selective service you have to be in a specific age range (18-26 I think?) and be a lawful permanent (or non-non immigrant?) resident.

As compensation they should increase the probability of them being called by 10x for the next few years.

If the goal of a jury is to be unbiased toward the person on trial (attempt equal representation from the citizenry), wouldn't biasing the selection now violate the right of the defendant to trial by jury of peers as much as the instance in question? We would do well to remember that the objective of jury selection is not to give all groups equal representation simply for the sake of fairness but to give the defendant a fair, unbiased jury for a trial.

It wouldn't be fair to today's defendants to do this, just as some sort of "justice" for those of yesterday.

It’s the thinking that underlines blood sacrifice: if we ritually commit an injustice, it will atone for past injustice.

The defendants who were previously found guilty under the old jury selection can ask for a second trial under this new jury. Any the young people who were deprived of jury duty also get a chance.

A jury that is 10x more likely to have youth? Not necessarily any more just. That's not right either. Couldn't we just strive for a just jury?

There is nothing yet that says anyone convicted has a right to a new trial based on this information, the supreme court granted a stay until the case, and the effect of this error can determined.

I would rather think that past trials would be the ones affected, and then be eligible for retrial.

It says "About 15 percent of Americans are called for jury duty each year". Multiply that by 10x and get 150%. But I thought someone can only be called for jury once per year.

I guess you could increase the chance of being called only for those who haven't been called yet.

People could be called for jury duty either in the state/county/local court system, or the federal court system. Few criminal cases go to a jury trail, since >90% of them plead out (aka plea bargain: plead guilty to lesser charges).

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-criminal-cases-a...

Being called for jury duty is a mild inconvenience. Serving on a jury for more than a few days can be a significant inconvenience, but most people should be glad to serve if they like having a right to trail by jury.

Some counties in California like to call a lot of people often for jury duty, and send most of them home without serving. Many judges will consider "but I already served as a juror for X days this/last year" when deciding whether to have a prospective juror to serve or not.

California uses both DMV driver's license and county voter databases to generate jury pool lists. The merge algorithm is, well, simple. If you have a DL as J. Random Hacker and vote as John R. Hacker, you are very likely to get called for jury duty twice as often.

That doesn't make any sense. There is no right to be a juror; rather, the defendant has a right to a jury of his peers. So the affected defendants deserve compensation, not those excluded from the jury pool.

This doesn't seem purposeful. It seems like someone finding confirmation bias because a group more likely to identify with their beliefs has been partially left out (in this case).

At least for the "anti-black" case mentioned, here's the case itself: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-circuit/1604783.html

Reading over the technical part, it seems like an honest mistake. Who's to say everyone doesn't end up affected at some point or another? I agree we always ought to minimize such errors, but they're arguably better than the human alternative (against which many accusations of various biases have been leveled).

I think we're more likely to find examples of this because the normal cases (where minority groups aren't affected) aren't litigated as widely.

Now that there is evidence that this sort of thing can happen, it should be a responsibility of the justice system to have regular audits in place to ensure that it stops happening.

I’m surprised at how few times I’ve been summonsed. Once in Miami when I was maybe 20 and made it to voir dire but was dismissed. Once in Santa Clara, CA but never got to voir dire, and twice in Raleigh, NC but when I called the night before was told I wasn’t needed. So I’ve basically only ever even been interviewed once. I’m 47. I’ll probably have a summons waiting for me in the mail tomorrow.

Also 47, sounds similar

- 2 times had to call but wasn't needed

- once, sat in a room waiting but then we were all dismissed

- this year, 2 day jury selection; I ended up in seat #2 on the 2nd day for about 4 hours before being dismissed

I've been called for jury duty almost every year since I was 20 (I'm in my late 20s now). It's a frustrating waste of time considering how much lawyers hate engineers being on the jury.

What would be the penalty for the company and the state government in this case?

For a penalty to be appropriate we'd need to be able to identify a harm to someone. That's a stretch in this case, I think.

I wonder what proportion of judicial districts or jury pools are managed by external companies, and how concentrated their management is - if some large proportion is managed by some very small number of companies.

It took defense attorneys years to figure this out?

You must not know much about public defenders offices, in general they are under funded, and undermanned, and it isn't like there is anyone monitoring the jury composition of every case in the state at any given time.

The problem is compounded by youth being the number one group of people who naturally aren't called for jury duty. You have to be registered to vote, or have a drivers lisc. to even be in the pot to be selected as a possible.

Young people tend to move around a lot more than other segments of the population, so even if they are called, they may no longer be reachable at the address the state has for them, or they have moved out of state entirely and are no longer eligible to be seated.

Many youth, don't have access to reliable transportation to get them to a courthouse even if they are on one of the two list mentioned above.

They are also in one of the largest groups of people, who just flat out refuse to show up.

You also can't be a felon, you have to be literate, and able to read/write/speak English (This is in Louisiana law.) and considering that Louisiana has roughly a 25% youth illiteracy rate.

So it isn't really difficult to see, how this could be overlooked.

And honestly, there isn't a chance in hell that a defense attorney noticed this, and more likely one of the many justice reform groups in Louisiana that found this, or received a tip about the issue.

I've been called once in a decade of being elegable. Seems I should be able to calculate the odds of that happening

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