Do Franklin County juries reflect diversity of the community? Often, it's up to chance

A Columbus-based social justice group expressed concern about the lack of representation on the Franklin County jury that remained deadlocked in the murder trial of former sheriff's deputy Jason Meade, leading to a mistrial.

Special prosecutors announced they will attempt to retry Meade, who faces charges of murder and reckless homicide in the Dec. 4, 2020, shooting death of Casey Goodson Jr., a Black man.

A deeper look: Analyzing attorneys' strategies in Jason Meade trial -- the high bar for officer convictions

The jury in the first trial included four men, eight women and four alternates — three women and one man. Only one juror on the entire 16-person panel appeared to be a person of color.

Nearly 20 social justice groups such as the People's Justice Project, Central Ohio Freedom Fund, Justice, Unity and Social Transformation (JUST) and Showing Up for Racial Justice Ohio (SURJ-Ohio) have asked in an open letter for the next jury to more representative of the community.

"When we see an injustice take place, it's up to us to raise our voices, it's up to us to make things clear," Ramon Obey, executive director of JUST, said at a march after the mistrial. "That's why we came out here today, to say the system is failing us."

But how those potential jurors will be selected is largely left up to chance.

Franklin County chooses residents at random for jury duty based on active voter registrations in the county. As of Jan. 31, that included more than 880,000 people.

However, the Board of Elections does not track the race or gender of registered voters, so it is impossible to know if the percentages of registered voters completely reflect population data, Public Information Officer Aaron Sellers said.

Other counties, like Hamilton County, also use voter rolls.

Jury duty rules in Ohio rest with individual counties

Nearly 50 of Ohio's 88 counties have started to use driver license information from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to select prospective jurors. Ohio law prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from serving on a jury, so drivers under the age of 18 are excluded.

Summit County decided to include residents with valid driver's licenses and state identification cards in 2023. The decision came after criticism of how a special grand jury was selected in the investigation into the shooting of Jaylon Walker by Akron police.

The use of BMV records is typically thought to give a potential pool of jurors the best chance of accurately representing a cross-section of the community, said Ric Simmons, associate dean for faculty and intellectual life and Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

"A diverse jury will bring different perspectives to looking at the evidence, which is what you want," he said. "The image that is projected is important. When people see a verdict, it’s important people see it as a fair one that is from a panel that is well-represented. It also matters so that they can accept a verdict."

Simmons also said in a high-profile case like Meade's, finding a diverse jury could prove more difficult.

"(The attorneys) are looking for people they can excuse for cause because they’ve made up their mind and have a strong opinion they can’t put aside and be impartial," Simmons said. "In a case like this, I can imagine people in the Black community may have heard about it more and have stronger feelings about it."

"If people are truly being honest, they may not be able to be impartial and that could have easily knocked out a lot of potential jurors," he said.

Is the case woth the cost?: Special prosecutors on Jason Meade trial paid more than the county prosecutor's salary

Other countries in Europe and Asia that use a jury system don't allow challenges for cause by attorneys, Simmons said.

For Meade's trial, a special pool of more than 100 people was selected to potentially make up the jury. Those potential jurors were asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire. After that, some jurors were questioned individually about their answers, particularly past exposure to the Meade case.

Each court in Ohio can operate their jury selection process how they see fit, Simmons said, and having a centralized process for every court in the state would run against the grain of how other court processes work.

"We have decentralized so much of our criminal justice system, it’d be hard to have uniformity in that sense," he said. "Different jurisdictions do what they want in just about everything, so it would seem to go against our local rules ideology that we have."

Simmons said while the courts can't control who shows up when they are given a jury duty summons and who ignores it, there are more ways to increase the likelihood of increased diversity.

"The issue would be for people to not feel like jury service is a chore and not an unpleasant duty. They should feel it’s important to do, they’re fulfilling a duty for their society, their city and state," Simmons said. "The more disillusioned people get, people of color in this state especially, the Black community has lost a lot of faith in police and the courts etc., if we can combat that, we can improve."

However, how a jury looks physically does not necessarily reflect the members' true diversity of the panel.

"If you only look at race and gender, which is what people see when they look, you’re not getting the whole picture. They may be diverse by economic class or political opinions," Simmons said.

In a trial like Meade's, which lasted three weeks, the time constraints may be more problematic than in a trial that may only last a few days.

Simmons said paying attention to how juries are selected and appear only in the highest profile of cases, which he said were less than 1% of all cases that occur, can also provide a misleading glimpse into how the system works.

"For the most part, juries do a pretty good job in deciding cases," he said. "People focus on the cases that make it into the news and those are the ones that have the best chance of having some kind of mistake. There’s more pressure on the system, there’s more irregularity because they’re under pressure. It’s not the system at its worst but it’s not necessarily at its best."

bbruner@dispatch.com

@bethany_bruner

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Do Franklin County juries accurately reflect diversity of community?