Connecticut has made strides in diversifying its jury pools. Experts say raising juror pay could be the next step.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Andrew Brown to discuss his article, written with Jenna Carlesso and Renata Daou “CT overhauled its jury selection system, but racial disparities remain,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read their story here.
WSHU: Hello, Andrew. In 2020, Connecticut expanded the number of people eligible to serve on a jury and increased the number of people who received a jury summons in the state's largest cities. So why does data show that minority communities are still under-represented on Connecticut juries?
AB: So I think the reason for that is that for most of its history, Connecticut really didn't look or analyze who made up juries in Connecticut, whether it's criminal or civil cases. And so, despite all of the state's efforts to kind of reform its jury selection process in the past four years and its attempts to diversify the ranks of jurors in Connecticut, the state is really at a starting point. This is a brand new effort, and so I think that is why you're still seeing some under-representation of Hispanic and black jurors in Connecticut, in some of its judicial districts.
WSHU: The decision to expand the pool and increase minority participation also contributed to our having this data.
AB: That's correct. The State Supreme Court, back in 2020 under former Chief Justice Robinson, directed a task force to kind of look at every aspect of how the state selects jurors and how they find their way, you know, into a courtroom. And as part of that, they did all the things you just said, trying to make sure that people from Connecticut's largest cities where, you know, you have majority-minority populations, are able to be on juries. At the same time, they asked the legislature, and the legislature agreed to start collecting this demographic information on the tens of thousands of people who receive jury summons yearly.
WSHU: You looked at several districts, including the Stanford North Judicial District. What do these numbers show?
AB: It's hard to have a barometer, right? Because we don't have historical data, we can't say whether Connecticut is doing better or worse now. I suspect it is probably doing better than historically, simply because of the task force's changes. But the data shows that if you look at a statewide perspective, the representation of white, Black, Asian, Hispanic jurors, if you look statewide, is actually pretty good and representative of the population.
But what we did is we looked at individual judicial districts, right, Hartford, Stanford, there are 13 judicial districts in this state, and we looked at the populations of those regions compared to the jury pools that are assembled in those court systems. And what it showed is that in places like Stanford, there were slight under-representations of black jurors. In Hartford, there were slight representations under representations of Hispanic jurors. In places like the Windham Judicial District up in the northeast corner, there was also an underrepresentation of Hispanic years. So it's really hard to say, you know, and kind of put this into context because Connecticut is one of the first states to really look at this data and grapple with it in a very public way like this. So we don't have a great comparison to make, but the data clearly shows that there is some room for improvement if the state's stated goal is to make sure that, you know, jury pools are representative of the population as a whole.
WSHU: Now, you give us an example of a very high-profile case that kind of illustrates what we're talking about here. This was a case that happened in 2009, and you talked with Shirin Bryant, who watched an all-white jury acquitted a white police detective who shot and killed her 18-year-old brother, Jason, in the north end of Hartford. Could you just tell us a little bit about that case?
AB: Yeah, we went back to that time frame because we didn't have names of criminal defendants currently who faced a jury trial that was still kind of protected under the state's laws, as far as looking at this jury data. So we wanted to emphasize the importance of why the state undertook this effort to begin with. And my colleague Jenna Carlesso, at her time at the Hartford Courant, remembered that case of Bryant being shot and killed in the north end of Hartford. And you know, what that all-white jury in that case really led to was a severe amount of distrust in the judicial system. That's why we highlighted that. You know, even to this point, Jashon’s sister, you know, she still doesn't trust the judicial system because of the image of that all-white jury essentially refusing to convict the police officer who killed her brother.
WSHU: Basically, jury members were interviewed, and they did not think anything was wrong with the verdict.
AB: Yeah, they, at the time, the Hartford Courant and other news outlets, really covered that trial, and the jurors themselves afterward essentially said, like, the racial factor did not play into this. That being said, as former Chief Justice Robinson and some law professors pointed out, it doesn't really matter if it had a real, practical effect if it has an effect of sowing distrust in the judicial system and the jury system. You still have a problem, whether it's perceived or real. And you know, academic research, as we pointed out in the story, has shown that when you have juries that are diverse in race and ethnicity, research has shown that there is better consideration of the evidence in the case. Then, there's more and more thorough deliberation in many cases. So, there are reasons to have diverse juries outside of just the image in a courtroom of maybe an all-white jury sitting in judgment of someone who is of a different race.
WSHU: The judicial branch is aware of this information. Are there any steps being taken? The last time they broadened the pool was by including people with permanent residency, for instance. Is there a move to broaden it even more?
AB: One of the things in particular that we wrote about in the story that the judicial department has been asking for and that they hope will improve the diversity of juries is juror pay. The task force actually recommended that juror pay in Connecticut be considered an increase, mostly because research has shown that people who are of a lower income status can either be excused from jury service or opt out.
WSHU: What do you get paid for serving on a jury in Connecticut right now?
AB: The first several days, I believe the first five days of your jury service are supposed to be covered by your employer. But if you're unemployed, you only get $50 per day, which, as we pointed out in the story, is way below the minimum wage even in Connecticut if you're working a 40-hour week. So Connecticut, compared to other states, is doing pretty well in juror pay, but researchers have pointed out that's largely because your pay has been kind of shoved to the side nationally for a long, long time. And so the compensation of yours today is extremely low. It's seen as a duty, I guess they don't want to compensate to a large degree. But if you were trying to entice and get people in the door who have a, you know, a minimum wage job, and they're maybe working two jobs, you have to consider the pay, and you know what it would do to you know, if they can't afford to essentially serve on a jury.
WSHU: So Andrew, is there legislation in the works here? What is the judicial branch trying to do? How is the judicial branch trying to get that done?
AB: The judicial branch has asked the legislature, in several consecutive sessions, to increase jury pay, and not just pay, but also consider reimbursement for things like childcare, family care, increased travel and expense reimbursement. The legislature has not taken that up, though, you know, proposed bills are quickly stripped out or that bill doesn't advance. The legislature staff has estimated it would cost several million dollars to implement that per year, and so with that price tag, even though $1 million or $3 million dollars, in the grand scheme of the state budget, isn't a huge thing, it just has not gained traction.
