Limits on Juror Travel Clarified by Court

A state Court of Appeal has upheld the 20-mile limit on the distance any Los Angeles County juror can be required to travel to court, but said the distance cannot be further reduced for a juror’s convenience if it means denying a defendant a representative jury.

The opinion was handed down Tuesday by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in the case of Eddie Bobby McDonald, who claimed that his jury in Long Beach Superior Court had too few blacks because blacks living within a 20-mile radius of the Long Beach court had been assigned to Compton and other courthouses nearer their homes.

“We are convinced that the policy of assigning jurors to the courthouse closest to their residences gives undue weight to the state’s asserted interest in juror convenience at the expense of a defendant’s constitutional right to a jury which represents a fair cross section of the community,� Justice Arleigh Woods wrote in the 41-page opinion.

Reverse Conviction

Justices Robert Kingsley and Eugene McClosky concurred in the unanimous opinion which for the second time reversed McDonald’s murder conviction.

Drawn randomly from both voter registration lists and Department of Motor Vehicle lists, local jurors are selected on a countywide basis but assigned to the courthouse nearest their homes.

Los Angeles County Jury Commissioner Frank Zolin’s office devised that system by interpreting this specific wording in the state Code of Civil Procedure: “In counties with more than one court location, the rules shall reasonably minimize the distance traveled by jurors. In addition, in the County of Los Angeles no juror shall be required to serve at a distance greater than 20 miles from his or her residence.�

The appellate court said the problem with assigning jurors close to home “will always result in a relatively low percentage of blacks at the Long Beach Courthouse, because there are other courthouses within 20 miles of it which are closer to the concentrated area of blacks in the South-Central part of the county.�

Evidence showed that blacks eligible for jury duty totaled 14.8% of the population living within 20 miles of the Long Beach courthouse, according to 1980 census data. But blacks made up only 6.2% of jury panels surveyed at the Long Beach Courthouse in 1985.

“We hold that, while the 20-mile radius exemption is constitutionally sound, (the Code of Civil Procedure) cannot be interpreted so as to further reduce the area of jury selection by requiring assignment to the nearest courthouse within the 20-mile zone,� Woods wrote.

“The Legislature has already addressed the question of juror convenience by providing Los Angeles County jurors the 20-mile exemption. That distance is a reasonable accommodation,� Woods wrote.

Zolin, the jury commissioner, when informed of the ruling, said he will study the opinion and discuss with the county counsel the possibility of appealing it.

For McDonald, the decision means that he could be tried for the third time for the August, 1979, murder and robbery of dishwasher Jose Esparza in Long Beach.