Baltimore City juries tend to convict defendants at a lower rate than surrounding counties, but when an Abell Foundation report last month suggested the city move to a “regional jury pool,” the city’s top prosecutor and defense attorney immediately objected.
“I think that citizens who live in the city, and pay taxes in the city, should sit on juries in the city,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy said at a recent meeting of the Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
“The state’s attorney’s office is interested in preserving justice. We’re not interested in stacking the deck. … The regional jury pool idea, I believe, is unconstitutional and extreme.”
Jessamy’s statements were quickly backed by Baltimore’s top public defender, Elizabeth Julian.
“I think the regional jury pool idea is horrible,” she said.
A regional jury pool may not be politically popular in Baltimore, but is it actually unconstitutional?
Federal and state constitutions appear to have no provision against such an idea, but some could argue that Article 20 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights prohibits it by analogy.
“You have the right to a trial of facts where they arise,” said University of Baltimore Law Professor Byron Warnken.
“It would seem a little bit implicit that the jury should also be [from the same city or county].”
A September report of the Abell Foundation, called “Disparities in Jury Outcomes,” found that jurors in surrounding counties were 30 times more likely to convict a defendant of the most serious charge than juries in the city.
The report recommended studying the concept of a “regional criminal justice system similar to the Federal District Court which selects jury trial participants from a cross section of the state” in order to “ameliorate the potential impact of witness and juror intimidation and to increase the jury pool to include a greater number of individuals who may be less likely to have negative perceptions of the criminal justice system.”
The U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant a trial in the “state and district where in the crime shall have been committed.”
“By analogy, that would probably mean that jurors should come from within the county where the crime was committed,” Warken said.
“But I could argue it either way. … There is nothing constitutional that absolutely requires me to be tried in the same county; so therefore there’s probably nothing constitutional that requires my jury to come from the same county.”
So, would the General Assembly have it in its power to go to a regional jury?
“My gut feel is, they would,” Warken said.
