Opinion ID: 1951964
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Selection of a Burlington County Jury

Text: In his initial motion for a change of venue, Harris asked the trial court to select Camden County as the place for trial because of the county's relative proximity to Mercer County, the minimum circulation of newspapers containing prejudicial publicity, and because the racial makeup of the county's population (its demographics) was nearly the same as Mercer County. Initially, the court rejected Camden County as a transfer site or source for a jury because it was not one of the counties contiguous to Mercer County and because there was no legal authority requiring the court to consider the racial makeup of the alternate jury pool in its decision. The court considered the two contiguous counties of Hunterdon and Burlington. It chose Hunterdon because the two Trenton newspapers (the Times and the Trentonian ) had a combined Burlington County circulation of approximately 20,000, split fairly evenly between the two. The circulation of the two Trenton newspapers in Hunterdon County was about 3,000 daily, of which some 1,200 were of the Trentonian. After the Appellate Division determined that racial demographics should be considered by the court and that the trial court had erred in refusing to consider Camden County merely because it was not contiguous to Mercer County, Harris again urged the selection of Camden County based upon publicity and the demographic considerations. Camden County, like Mercer County, consisted of an urban center surrounded by rural areas with a sixteen percent African-American population. At most, 250 copies of the Trentonian circulated in Camden County. In contrast, Burlington County consisted of largely rural areas with an African-American population of only fourteen percent. The trial court concluded that the racial demographics of the counties were virtually identical and that the circulation of the Trenton newspapers in Burlington County was not large enough to prejudice defendant. Relying upon the considerations of proximity and efficiency, it chose Burlington County as the source for selection of the jury. Defendant finds it to be a paradox that although the relatively large local circulation of the Trenton papers had motivated the trial court to reject Burlington County in the first instance (Hunterdon's circulation of 3,000 having been preferable to Burlington's circulation of 22,000), when required by the Appellate Division to reconsider, the court chose Burlington County over Camden even though the circulation figures were more widely disparate: Burlington's 22,000 copies compared with Camden's 250. The trial court held that the extent of news coverage in Burlington County should not be decisive because even if the case were tried on the Ross Ice Shelf [in Antarctica], it would generate publicity. There is no way to avoid that. Defendant argues that because the goal is to minimize the danger that prejudice [from extensive pretrial publicity] will infiltrate the adjudicatory process, Koedatich I, supra, 112 N.J. at 268, 548 A. 2d 939 (quoting Williams I, supra, 93 N.J. at 63, 459 A. 2d 641), the most effective method of minimizing the potential was to select a jury from a county which was outside of the circulation range of the Trenton newspapers. Defendant would prevail if the court had taken no other steps to minimize the danger that prejudice would infiltrate the adjudicatory process. The court took firm steps to ensure that none of those households that received the Trentonian (the newspaper containing the most inflammatory material) would be on this jury. A questionnaire specifically inquired whether a potential juror had read the Trenton newspapers. Any juror who regularly read the Trentonian was effectively subject to elimination for cause in the jury selection process. In addition, the court ensured that during the course of the trial most jurors were assembled at the Burlington County Court House and transported directly to the Mercer County Court House with attempts to minimize the exposure to the hawking of papers en route to the court house. Although the court empaneled the jurors from Burlington County, the net effect was not significantly different than if the jury had been from Camden County. As noted, the racial demographics of the two counties were substantially similar, although Camden is more urban. When the jury panel was finally composed, it included two minority members. The court systematically excluded readers of the Trentonian from the panel of jurors. (The court's initial goal was to select sixty jurors and eventually qualified forty-nine jurors on the day before trial was to commence on January 3, 1996.) The principal risk of jury contamination in this case arose in Mercer county and not in the home counties of the jurors. It made little difference whether the jurors were from Burlington or Camden counties. C.