Opinion ID: 342459
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Inconsistency with the Act

Text: 15 The practice unquestionably deviated from the Act's provisions governing petit juror selection in the normal course. The statute provides that the jury clerk shall from time to time publicly draw at random from the qualified jury wheel such number of names of persons as may be required for assignment to grand and petit jury panels. 28 U.S.C. § 1866(a). 2 The names are placed in grand and petit jury panel lists. When the court orders a jury to be drawn, the jury clerk issues summonses for the required number from the appropriate list. 28 U.S.C. § 1866(a), (b). 16 The volunteers who sat on appellant's July jury were selected for the prior June term in accordance with the above scheme. When the July term arrived, their names were thus no longer on the lists of those drawn from the qualified jury wheel for assignment to panels. Indeed, it was the very inadequacy of available petit jurors drawn from the qualified jury wheel that prompted resort to the prior month's juror list. 17 The Act does specifically authorize a court to deal with such unanticipated shortages of petit jurors drawn from the qualified jury wheel. It provides that in such a situation, 18 the court may require the marshal to summon a sufficient number of petit jurors selected at random from the voter registration lists, lists of actual voters, or other lists specified in the plan, in a manner ordered by the court consistent with sections 1861 and 1862 of this title. 19 28 U.S.C. § 1866(f) (emphasis added). 3 It is on § 1866(f) that the Government must and does rest its argument that the employment of volunteers to meet a shortage was not a violation of the Act. Even this argument, however, proves inadequate. 20 Even assuming that the list of last month's jurors was an acceptable list from which to select emergency jurors under § 1866(f), 4 we would still confront the telling contradiction between the use of volunteers and the random selection mandated as explicitly by the emergency provision as by the remainder of the Act. Whatever list a court uses as the source of emergency jurors, § 1866(f) requires random selection from that list. It seems self-evident that allowing people to decide whether they wish to perform a particular task is quite the opposite of randomly selecting those who, unless within narrow and objectively determined categories of exemptions and excuses, must perform the task. 5 A volunteer is not a random selectee. 21