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PROVO, Utah (AP) -- A Utah County defense attorney is raising questions about the racial makeup of jury pools, saying they fail to adequately account for minorities.
Mike Esplin claims an imbalance violates the Constitution's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial. He said Utah's Administrative Office of the Courts has failed to conduct timely reviews of the master jury list.
He wants to quash jury lists for two upcoming trials in Utah County, where Hispanics are the largest minority group.
"If something is not done about it, it's going to get even worse," Esplin said.
He said he first noticed the problem during a 2005 trial, when a pool of 100 potential jurors included three people with Hispanic surnames. Only one of those was actually of Hispanic descent.
Potential jurors come primarily from the state's drivers-license database, although voter registration and tax records are also used.
Timothy Shea, a staff attorney at the Administrative Office of the Courts, said a biannual review is done to ensure the master jury list is inclusive. But he concedes that no procedures are in place to collect information on gender and race. A new report was released Aug. 16.
"It's a count of the non-duplicate records in our database for each county, and we compare that with the governor's estimated adult population," Shea said. "We want to include every adult citizen that is qualified to serve on the jury."
The 2006 adult population of Utah County is 306,890, according to the state budget office. But the number of names on the county's master jury list on Aug. 8 was 358,483, Esplin said.
He said a recent check showed 58,000 duplicate names. There was also a disparity between Utah County Hispanics counted in the 2000 Census and the master jury list.
But fixing the problem could create a larger one and stall the judicial system, 4th District Judge Lynn Davis warned during a hearing last week.
"You have a remedy, not a very comfortable one -- quash the jury" until everything can be fixed, said Davis, who is expected to make a decision in about six weeks.
Utah County Deputy Attorney Randy Kennard said there's no way to accurately measure how many Hispanics are eligible for jury service. He said illegal immigration throws a wrench into collecting good data.
"We don't have anything here to get a grip on," he said.
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(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
