While the allegations of juror misconduct may be the first in White Pine County in a very long time, they or similar jury challenges may not be the last especially in connection to trials involving inmates at the Ely State Prison.
Shortly after ESP opened in 1989 the state of Nevada also added another District Judge to the White Pine County the major reason being that then one current judge could not hope to handle the increased case load a maximum security prison would bring. The state also increased established an office for the state’s attorney general office and the state’s public defender’s office in Ely.
But while the legal system was greatly expanded especially to handle the demands of the prison no one could do anything to increase the sparse While Pine County population which forms the third crucial leg of the justice system the jury pool.
And after more than 20 years that pool may have begun to run dry.
According to the White Pine County Clerks office more than ten percent of the county’s jury pool has already been called to serve this year alone to serve on trials with cases from the prison making up three of the 12 jury trials.
By comparison Elko County which has over four time the population of White Pine has used just four percent of its jury pool this year for the 19 trials it held.
The fact that despite it has four times the population but only seven more trials than White Pine can perhaps explained in three letters: E.S.P.
Trials cost money at least for civilians and for many legal fees may make a plea bargain look a little better. However for the inmates of ESP those costs are born by the state. An inmate may look at a trail not only as a way not only not to increase his time behind bars but also as a way to break up the monotony of a life sentence and even to make the state pay a little bit more for taking away his freedom.
And as more inmates go to trial the number of qualified jurors for a case involving ESP grows smaller every year.
For the defense the pool becomes even more limited as the number of prospective jurors who have either worked at the prison themselves or who have a close relation employed at the prison grows every years. The same holds true for the prosecution as relatives of inmates also increases.
Shortly after the prison opened a scandal erupted when it was revealed that the wife of one inmate was impaneled to serve on a jury deciding the case of another inmate who was in the same cell block as her husband.
While that error was written off to an early glitch it is much more likely now to find a prospective juror in a pool with at least second hand knowledge of the prison if not of the crime to be tried.
While no one is predicting that it will soon be impossible to find 12 good men (and women) to fill a jury, it is likely that as time goes by it will become harder. And perhaps as the pickings grow smaller attorneys will have to become less picky when choosing prospective jurors.
That does not automatically mean that there will be an increase in mistrials but perhaps it does mean an increase in motions for them.
And of all the people who are inclined to appeal the inmates at ESP with free legal aid and their own law library may be the most inclined to do so.
First, I must say this is a poorly-written piece. Have you no proof-readers? I don’t ordinarily bother to read through such agonizingly bad copy, but the issue is an important one in White Pine County, so I mentally inserted commas and corrected “born” to “borne” – Etc.
As a rural resident of WP, I have been called for jury duty three times, this year. All of these cases plead out, and I did not have to make the 65-mile trek to the city, after all. In any given year, I am typically called at least four times. To date, I have yet to serve on any jury.
As close as I have come to serving, was sitting through the first round of jury selection for a trial involving a black inmate. As candidate after candidate was dismissed as having ties to the prison, I began to feel tremendous sympathy for the man going to trial. (I knew none of the particulars of the case.) Not only was he facing a jury biased by community experience of ‘incarceration central’, but jurors were being drawn from an almost all-white pool.
After a brief recess, the judge announced that the defendant had decided to accept at plea bargain. I did not wonder why.