Jury service woes

By Mike Perry

In addition to the judges, for whom this letter should be a direct concern, copies are being sent to the local news media, government officials, and law firms.

It concerns two serious deficiencies in jury selection at the King County Superior Court and is based in part on correspondence with Greg Wheeler, manager of Jury Services and Laura Inveen, chair of the Judge Jury Committee.

The charges made here should not be taken lightly. If the situation is as serious I believe it to be, virtually every decision rendered by a jury in the King County Superior Court for some indeterminate period in the past could be subject to legal challenge, with costs running into the tens of millions of dollars.

Some weeks ago, I received a jury summons from the King County Superior Court. Since I'm a writer with a limited income who copes with expensive Seattle by taking temporary work wherever I find it, I thought requesting a hardship exemption would be simple. I've done it before with other courts and found they readily agreed. They understand that a juror under financial pressure can't be expected to render an impartial verdict. Unfortunately, King County Superior Court doesn't follow that sensible practice.

Since my jury duty (began recently), I can put my situation into precise, financial terms. I could have worked 22 hours . . . earning roughly $220. Instead, I will only be able to work seven hours (on Saturday), for an income of $70. For the King County Superior Court, having one's monthly income reduced to $280 apparently doesn't constitute a hardship. It's that bad.

Actually, it's far worse. Others in grimmer situations than my own can't get hardship exemptions. I've been working for the past two months at a part-time, temporary job downtown, so I had a little savings built up when that work ended last weekend.

But when I left work on Friday, I found a woman I had worked with seated at the bus stop and almost crying. She'd just been hired and after only one week, she was out of work, with no savings and facing the cost of an expensive blood medication she has to take. But that wasn't what had her upset. It was that "Wheeler" - she mentioned the King County Superior Court's manager of Jury Services by name - had rejected her request for a hardship exemption for jury duty starting this week, at the very time she needed to be looking for a new job.

"If she can't get a hardship exemption," I told myself, "no one can get one." It was then that I realized that the issues involved were much bigger than me, and the impetus for this open letter began.

Keep in mind that the real problem isn't he-of-no-heart, Greg Wheeler. He's merely the symptom, someone who's petty, bureaucratic and mean because others pay him to be that way. There would certainly be rejoicing in the post-juror community if he was fired, but even if he was, within months his replacement would be acting much the same. What my co-worker had seen in her brief contact with the King County Superior Court , what I have seen over the past few weeks, and what others have described to me isn't something that's hidden from the eyes of the court's 50 judges and 12 commissioners.

They're not innocent babes in the wood. They know the hardship exemption process is a sham. Some judges, I'm told, go to considerable effort in their courtrooms on Monday morning, weeding jurors who shouldn't have been there in the first place. To the extent that this letter is for them, it's not to inform them of facts they know only too well. It's to warn them of the consequences if their court's major deficiencies aren't addressed quickly and definitively.

The first deficiency is admittedly broader in extent than the King County Superior Court. It's the common practice of

drafting jurors like serfs, threatening them with legal harm if they don't show up at the appointed time, and paying a pittance. The $25 I was paid for answering two questions as a witness in a traffic case in a Redmond court may have barely compensated me for my travel time, but it a least demonstrated that the court was aware that my time had value.

But King County Superior Court judges make no such effort. They know that the $10 a day their court pays its jurors is less than the minimum wage 40 years ago. They know that a payment that small can only be regarded as a insult, much like giving a penny tip to a waitress. And they know that the absolute maximum their court might pay, roughly $200 a month, could keep no one alive in Seattle.

Knowing isn't the problem; caring is. That's what I mean by a culture of contempt for jurors. It manages to be both mean spirited and stupid.

And yes, an employer is legally required to keep the paychecks flowing while someone does jury duty. But what does jury duty mean for those who are out of work or who get only occasional employment like the young woman I mentioned? Jury duty doesn't just pay a sum no one can live on, and it doesn't just keep someone from working at a job that does pay a living wage. (Even sweatshops pay better than the King County Superior Court .) It sterilizes someone's ability to get work for some indeterminate time in the future.

That woman not only could not look for work, she couldn't accept future work until that dreadful specter of jury duty was complete. And it is there where King County Superior Court 's unique culture of contempt for jurors is most obvious. Other courts are wise enough soften this cruel system. The routinely exempt such people from jury duty. That's precisely what happened the last time I was called up.

You also see this contempt displayed in what the King County Superior Court does not do. I live in North Seattle, an

easy bus ride from the King County Courthouse downtown. And yet they've assigned me to the Regional Justice Center in Kent, a miserably long commute away. No doubt those who live in the Renton-Kent-Auburn area are being sent downtown. A few seconds of clerical effort could end both problems.

Contempt, contempt, contempt. It's everywhere. It would also take only a few seconds to have a reserved parking place waiting for me - not much when eight hours labor is expected in return. Instead, the King County Superior Court warns me that I may not find parking nearby, and that I should be a good little juror-serf and take gosh-knows how many bus transfers to get there. For all their flaws, the King County Superior Court is certainly politically correct. I'm sure they care about the salmon and fret about spotted owls.

The list goes on and on. As a bachelor, perhaps what anger me most is something that doesn't seem to have bothered any of the court's 20 women judges or seven women commissioners.

There's no offer of child care assistance for any single or impoverished mother swept up by King County Superior Court 's

impressment gangs. There's not even the all-too-obvious conclusion that perhaps these already burdened women should be exempt from jury duty until their kids grow up. No, the best that the King County Superior Court will permit is a bit of a delay. Presumably, if a poor mother does enough of her shopping in dumpsters, she might save enough to pay for a week of childcare during jury duty.

That's the first deficiency created by this culture of contempt, the traditionally low wages paid jurors is made far more cruel by the King County Superior Court 's unique unwillingness to exempt anyone from jury duty, no matter how strained

their circumstances. Other courts avoid the problem of jurors overburdened by outside cares by routinely exempting them from jury duty. King County Superior Court does not. That leads to the second deficiency, dangerously ineffective in-court screening of jurors.

The woman I was working with understood the pressures she was under perfectly well. She knew she couldn't afford jury

service even for one week. Placed on a jury, her dominant thought had to be ending the trial as quickly as possible. There's no way she could be expected to give a defendant a fair trial. If most of the jury wanted to convict, she'd have to go along, whatever her convictions.

When I talked with her, she was trying to get up the courage to describe her problems to a judge. But what if she couldn't? Not every is like me.

Mike Perry is a Phinney Avenue resident.